SAP Monitoring FAQs - Functionality and Visibility

[Jonah.Kowall]

What do I need to know about SAP Monitoring functionality and visibility?

Frequently asked questions

• What monitoring capabilities are available for SAP applications?
• Do flowmaps provide visibility into databases?
• Can I baseline specific RFCs?
• Where can I see which RFC was called?
• Where does the SQL Statement data in Data Collectors come from?
• Additional Resources

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What monitoring capabilities are available for SAP applications?

SAP applications have different supported versions, platforms, and functionality. Therefore, there are different supported protocols used for communication between SAP systems and external applications, as well as different supported user interface technologies. Depending on your application and platform, you will have Analytics, Business Transactions, or both.

For details on supported environments and functionality, see SAP Supported Environments.

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Do flow maps provide visibility into databases?

The visibility currently available differs from what you are familiar with. Every SAP application server is tightly coupled to a database and all code uses that database. The node that displays in the flow map includes the application server and database.

In ABAP, there is no specific protocol to access the database since it's tightly coupled. You can monitor the databases with database monitoring and view information but that information isn’t tied in with the flow map.

Also, you can’t implement the instrumentation and inject your own code at runtime in ABAP as you can in Java; it can only be done at compile time. There are specific static implicit enhancement points where you can inject, typically at the beginning or end of a method.

Additionally, you can’t inject code at SQL execution since this is happening inside the SAP kernel rather than in ABAP.  

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Can I baseline specific RFCs?

Baselining is done on the complete Business Transaction, not the individual RFCs. However, if you configure a Business Transaction for a specific RFC, you will get a baseline of that RFC.

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Where can I see which RFC was called?

This information is listed in the snapshot properties under the URL section.

Look for the RFC name in the snapshot properties, under the Summary heading, labeled "URL"

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Where does the SQL Statement data in Data Collectors come from?

This data comes directly from SQL traces on the SAP System or the Expensive Statement Trace on HANA (tcode DB02).

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Additional Resources

• Introducing AppDynamics for SAP
• SAP Monitoring FAQs - ABAP Agent
• SAP Monitoring FAQs - C++ SDK and JCo

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[Kevin.Grant]

How is this solution different than Syslink Xandria's solution? (www.syslink-xandria.com)

[Jonah.Kowall]

Hello, Kevin. The Xandra product uses synthetic transactions to verify that things "should" work when a user tries to execute a transaction (similar to AppDynamics Synthetics on web applications). The issue is that when things don't work, why are they failing? AppDynamics for SAP does transaction tracing from end to end, and we do deep monitoring of the SAP components in both Java and ABAP to help identify the root cause of the issues. This means we look at every transaction from web, mobile, and SAPGUI.