How to Maintain SAP System Alias Entries in Productive Systems?
Updates:
- April 13th, 2017 – Added information how to maintain SAP System Alias entries in test systems
Problem:
You want to maintain a system alias entry for a backend system in your productive SAP NetWeaver Gateway hub.
The client settings of your productive client do not allow changes of client-specific objects. As a result you find that table /IWFND/V_DFSYAL can not be maintained. Opening the productive client to allow changes is usually not an option.
Solution as of SP06:
As of SP06 of SAP NetWeaver Gateway 2.0 the flag “Current Settings” for the IMG activity “Manage System Aliases” is active. If you start the table maintenance via the IMG activity in the productive system changes can be performed without the need to record the same in a customizing request which is not allowed due to the client settings.
Now, when starting table maintenance via the IMG (transcation SPRO –> SAP NetWeaver –> Gateway –> OData Channel –> Configuration –> Connection Settings –> Manage SAP System Alias) you will be able to maintain SAP system alias entries in your productive system.
Solution for SAP NetWeaver Gateway installations prior to SP06:
As a workaround (if the flag is not active) it would be possible to set this flag once and then you should be able to access the maintenance view
without being asked for a transport request as described in SAP Note 135028 – Transfer IMG activity to current setting.
“… To do this, open the IMG and display the IMG structure. Position the cursor on the corresponding IMG activity and select the menu path “Edit
-> Display IMG activity”. On the following screen, select the tab “Maint.objects”. A list of the assigned customizing objects is displayed. By double-clicking on the corresponding row, navigate to the customizing object and set the indicator “Current settings” directly.”
Caution:
Make sure that in transaction SCC4 (client maintenance), for that setting to work, “Client Role” must be set to “Production”. It is not sufficient to have entered “no changes allowed” for the client settings. Therefore, make sure that client settings are set as shown in the following screen shot.
How to perform these changes in test systems?
Please check SAP Note 356483 – Customizing: Current settings in the test system
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/356483
Current settings is only true for productive client, but what about DEV & QA instances, if you have multiple clients in DEV ? You gateway customizing has the image of your dev system and cannot be change ?
These tables needs to be change in all sap instances (dev, qa, prod)
/IWFND/V_DFSYAL
/IWBEP/C_SYSTEM
Also they are protected against changes according to their namespace, so we can't change the recording routine in SE54
Alex
As I understand, for QA, you need to open-up the client for a brief period and do changes to system alias.
Andre Fischer can you please confirm?
Good information in this troubleshooting guide 🙂
Regards,
PavanG
Hello Andre,
I was not able to locate the Assigned Object "Maintenance Object" in IMG activity on NW Gateway 7.4. Is there a transaction code, if not please guide me to the location in IMG.
Thanks so much in advance,
DN
Hello David,
Select the IMG - Manage SAP System Aliases -> from the Edit menu -> Click Display IMG Activity
Regards,
Navin
Thanks Navin. It looks like this screen can only be displayed in productive environment only.
Thanks again.
Thanks Navin!
Hi Andre.
We recently have upgraded our Gateway to Sap Netweaver 7.50 SP04 and now there are not current setting enable for these views.
When the system was in Sap Netweaver 7.50 SP3 these views were marked in standard as current setting.
Anybody knows something about this change? Is there any note to revert these views to current setting again?.
Best regards.
Hi Carlos,
I just checked it in my sand box system (which runs on SP5) and there the setting is also not available.
Can you please open a customer message?
Best Regards,
Andre
Hi Carlos,
I have just released SAP Note 2386159 - System Alias Maintenance Setting.
In short you have to change the settings for the view /IWFND/V_DFSYAL in your development system and transport the changes to your productive system so that the view /IWFND/V_DFSYAL is again marked as "direct setting".
For upcoming SP's and SAP NetWeaver releases the view will be again marked as "direct setting".
Best regards,
Andre
Hi Andre.
Thank you so much for the SAP Note 2386159 – System Alias Maintenance Setting. :).
Sorry but I had not read your previous message and that's why i didn't open a customer mesage.
Thanks.
Best regards.
Hello,
I'm trying to found a solution for put system alias in quality system working, when I searched many of tutorials have your link. But unfortunely don't resolve my problem.
Have you can give on solution to my problem here if you know please: https://answers.sap.com/questions/49923/how-can-i-use-system-from-dev-to-qa.html ?
I'm really disesperated.
Thanks very much for your time
Best Regards
Cristina Rodrigues
Hello Andra,
Thanks for a very useful information. I have a question. I am creating a system alias say GW_ECC with RFC destination as blank so that I can maintain the RFC destination in Quality and Production systems.
Becuase we have current setting for Production, I will maintian the RFC destination in Production. But what about the quality system. How to maintain the alias in quality system.
Good question ;-).
This is described in SAP Note 356483 - Customizing: Current settings in the test
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/356483
Is this OSS Note applicable as well to 7.4?
the note does not contain any restrictions with regards to the release. therefore it should be applicable to 7.40 as well. but i would recommend to simply try it out.
At my previous client, I configured the aliases and their corresponding RFC destinations to be environment-agnostic.
That is, the aliases and destinations do not point to a specific sysid/client combination, but a generic, logical destination, e.g. just "ECC" instead of "ERDCLNT100" or whatever.
That way, only the corresponding RFC destination in SM59 needs to be updated in each environment and will always point to the corresponding back-end system, i.e. alias "ECC" will point to ECC Dev from the GW Dev system and ECC Production from the GW Prod system.
(Of course, other solutions can still have their own RFC destinations; this is just for Gateway services).
In so doing, the services and their corresponding destinations need to be set up once only and can be transported through the landscape and will work correctly in each environment. No maintenance of system aliases is required in systems other than Dev.
If that is possible, this definitely an option.
Since we worked under the assumption that lots of customers would not do that but would use RFC destination naming conventions that follow the naming convention SIDxxx where xxx is the client number we introduced the system aliases as a wrapper.
In the end one has to enter the system specific information somewhere and do a mapping between the system alias name and the "real" hostname of a system.
Yes, of course the situation I am describing is the ideal. It is not always so straightforward.
But only having to maintain a single RFC destination in each environment (at least in the context of Gateway services) does simplify matters significantly.