Kill Session in BI4.1 SP3
There are a number of good reasons to upgrade to BI4.1 SP3.
However based on discussions with many customers, this one will make many BI admins happy. It has been one of the more requested little features for some time.
Kill session is finally here!
The CMC Sessions page has been modified to list out individual sessions for each user, with the ability to force end any one or all of a user’s sessions.
You will also notice that we list the client type that affects the session, for example Information Design Tool
You can select multiple sessions for a user and end them all at the same time. Note that we cannot get finer granularity than “BI Launhcpad”, since a user could be using CR, Web Intelligence and other tools in that sessions.
Also notice the session ID listed. This ugly looking string can be used by the administrator to reference the audits and logs to further trace down to what the user is doing, and help you isolate problematic sessions to keep those from occurring in the future.
Having said that, session management has been greatly cleaned up with BI4.1 SP2, and the feedback I have heard from customers in this regard has been very positive, so I very much hope that you will not need to spend much time in this screen.
The columns can also be sorted to help you quickly find old sessions, where you can list oldest sessions first.
One thing to be aware of is that ending a session does not end jobs that were initiated by that session. If a user has sent a big request to the database in a report refresh, ending the user’s BI session does not cancel the database request. It only frees the user’s BI session.
Hi Greg
This is useful, thanks for sharing.
do you know when SP3 goes on general release?
the latest I can see is SP2 fixpatch4
Steve
Hi,
With regards to 4.1 SP3 our product group are aiming for 'release to customer' (RTC) status at the end of this month (March 2014).
Obviously, this estimated date is on a 'best endeavour basis' and may quite likely be subject to change and delays. (i.e. let's say early April, to be on the safe side)
regards,
H
Hi,
SP3 has been released to customers.
regards,
H
Hello,
It is a very good news.
I have question to the statement made by Greg at the end that if session is killed then DB query still runs. What happens to the query once it finishes?
It just abends due to no reference as session is killed?
Please confirm.
Regards,
SS
Correct. No data is actually presented back (for example a Webi refresh) so the workflow is abandoned.
Thank you.
SS
We have had good feedback on this from the French User Group (USF). Another question that came in is "How do you tell which user session to kill if there are several sessions for the same user and you want to keep only one running?" Do you have to kill them all and start over or is there a way to kill all but one?
I haven't used the version built in to 4.1, but with the plug-in, you can kill individual sessions - this built in version is a bit better though because you could query on that session ID (I would think) in order to get a better understanding of which session you might want to kill.
My concern with killing sessions is that currently (in 4.0 SP7 Patch 7), we might kill an older session, but somehow it impacts the newer session - as if "it" got confused which session "it" was in and now the user ends up with Invalid Session or WIH 444444 errors. Hopefully, that is no longer an issue... I've got my fingers crossed based on what Greg posted!
thanks,
Missy
great news.
Also waiting https://ideas.sap.com/ct/ct_a_view_idea.bix?c=BB5523E4-062F-4420-B35F-0B1F0D4769A9&idea_id={5AA3BD2D-B9FB-455D-A9AD-7A41C6D3F8A0}