This blog is intended to be seen as an addendum to the document “SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management Trace Visualization” published by wolfgang.schaper when installing the tool on a Netweaver 7.40.
I think this tool is a great new addition to the BRFplus/DSM functionality which adds a big additional value to the BRFplus/DSM ecosystem. Although the description of the installation procedure is quite good I think there are some further pitfalls that I ran into and that I want to share with you. So this blog should be seen as an optional nice-to-know addition to the document (especially to section 6 of the document which focuses on the Netweaver 7.31).
System and Software Stack Details
Starting point for my installation was a Netweaver 7.40 with Service Pack 06 with Decision Service Management 1.0 SP03. I used the Gateway approach to make the OData Service available. In contrast to my comment in the article the OData Service is not contained within the service pack 06. I found the recent note 1966337 (BRFplus: Activation of ODATA-Backend for Lean Trace Visualization) which states that the OData service will be officially available not until SP09, but a downport exists for SP07 and SP08. So bad luck or at least more work to do make this tool available in for SP06 and lower :sad:
Nevertheless SP06 is good starting point for the installation of the tool with respect to the effort that has to be spent to get things going. Trying to install it in a lower SP of Netweaver 7.40 will enforce you to install a lot of notes with a lot of manual actions. For me that was a dead end as some notes could not be implemented due to wrong dependencies.
Getting the Coding Done
As described in the document you first have to step through section 2.1 to install the UI5 components. After that you have to go to section 6 to implement the OData Service manually due to the above mentioned lack of availability of the OData service FDT_TRACE even in Netweaver 7.40.
Before you start to implement the classes you should implement the note 1955524 (BRFplus: New Lean Trace Corrections 3) as this note includes some enhancements of the type definition in BRFplus (namely an enhancement of the type CL_FDT_WD_LEAN_TRACE_HELPER=>S_ID_INFO) that is used within the class ZCL_FDT_OD_TRACE_FUNCTION_DATA method GET_DETAILS that will cause an syntax if not available. So one note with no manual tasks in it is not too much additional effort from my point of view :wink:
The source code you can download from the SCN for the classes can then be easily implemented and activated as described in section 6.1. Nevertheless you should also be aware that there is already one note that corrects some issues in the OData classes (2017565 - BRFplus: ODATA back end - initial values) which you might need too but is not contained in the delivered source files.
The customizing of the service described in section 6.2 of the document is also straightforward.
What is somehow missing is the fact that you also have to adjust the constant value defining the name of the OData service in the UI5 application. Here you have to go to the BSP application you created in section 2.1 namely to the “js”-folder contained in the “Page Fragments” folder. Here open the “helper.js” file and replace the value for the service name (in the original version you will have the coding: var servicename = “FDT_TRACE”; ) with the one you have chosen when customizing the OData service (usually ZFDT_TRACE).
Now you can start and enjoy the trace visualization service if you have lean traces in your system :smile: .
Some additions to the troubleshooting
- If nothing gets displayed in the tool, you should check the entries in the table FDT_TRACE_0200. If there are none, nothing will get displayed as no traces exist.
- If you are playing around on a sandbox system with some local functions (like me) you might just have added the lean trace option when calling the BRFplus function to create them and you will certainly also persist the data.
But be aware that there is another point you have to take into account when dealing with lean traces: if you are you have to switch on the versioning of your artefacts in your function otherwise every time you change something in the function or its ingredients the already persisted traces might no longer by displayed. So as a best practice before calling a BRFplus function with lean trace mode execute the lean trace readiness check on the function level
[Update 23.07.2015] You have two different types of lean traces that you can use:
- Binary Format
- JSON Format (which is default in newer installations especially in NW 7.40)
According to Carsten's comment on this blog the JSON format no longer requires the versioning of the BRFplus artefacts, i. e. even without versioning the traces do not get lost when a change was made. This was not the case in the SP06 environment and seems to be delivered with a higher service pack (or there was a bug in SP06). So in higher releases/SPs the second addition from above is no longer valid
[End of Update]
If some warnings appear stating that the lean trace functionality cannot be used read them carefully and get rid of them
Finally I hope I could help some of you to avoid the same issues I ran into and speed you up with using this cool new feature of DSM/BRFplus
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