SAPUILandscapeGlobal.xml Entries for NWBC and SAP GUI
The new NWBC 5.0 and SAP GUI 7.40 when installed together leverage a new common set of XML files for managing connection entries. These new files (in %APPDATA%\SAP\Common\) are SAPUILandscapeGlobal.xml and SAPUILandscape.xml. And if you had a previous version of SAP GUI installed, your ini files and etc/services relevant enteries were migrated to these new files the first time you launch the logon pad.
This all seemed to work great when I installed the new front end tools, but I ran into issues as soon as I started trying to setup new system connections.
Issues with Message Server Logon Load Balancing
In our environment we rely on message server logon load balancing for our SAP GUI connections. When setting up a connection to a new system in the logon pad (New Entry –> User Defined –> Connection Type: Group/Server Selection) you’ll need to include the port # now ( <mshost>:<msport>) which Andreas mentions in
All was well until i tried creating NWBC logon entry. The best summary of the behavior i can give is that the newly defined system would randomly disappear from the list of systems to create a logon entry for
So i choose to setup a user defined entry, and once connected to the backend, tried to start a GUI transaction, eg. SM04, which would generate a message
Error parsing SAP GUI command line ‘ /FULLMENU SNC_PARTNERNAME=”p:…” SNC_QOP=0 /UPDOWNLOAD_CP=0 /SplashScreeOff /Theme=corbu /FontSize=100 /AccMode=0 /Rtl=0’
And then odd things started happening with the associate SAP GUI logon pad entry. The SID and message server host would disappear from the logon pad entry and if I looked at the details I’d get an error “Message server has been changed and no group/server is available“
Needless to say I would say there is some sort of bug going on here, but I did find a way to get these working.
The Fix
The key is to create your message server entries in your %APPDATA%\SAP\Common\SAPUILandscapeGlobal.xml file.
Simply Create a new <Message Server /> entry in the file. It is composed of uuid = generated uuid, name = System ID (SID), host = message server host, and port = message server port. (note: the entire xml file is NOT shown here)
At first I wasn’t sure if there was any logic to creating the uuid, then i found in the Installation Guide on page 67 that you could use any uuid generator to do so. If you do a google search for uuid generator you’ll find plenty. I happened to have a SDK on my computer which came with Microsoft’s uuidgen tool, so I opted to use that.
Once I added these entries for the new systems, i didn’t have any of the buggy behavior mentioned earlier, and was able to re-setup my logon entries permenantly, and call SAP GUI t-codes from my NWBC sessions via the message server load balanced connections!
Hope this helps some of you with you NWBC/GUI setups and deployments!
Thanks for this posting. After upgrading from SAPGUI 7.30 and NWBC 4.0 to a combined NWBC5.0 & SAPGUI 7.40 install I ran into some of the same symptoms as you mention, although not the exact same, but perhaps worth mentioning.
After the upgrade I no longer had the connections normally listed in the saplogon.ini file. I had only two connections, and these were manually added to the previous NWBC 4.0 client. What really made me laugh was that each time I started the new NWBC 5.0 client these two entries doubled!! 2 entries became 4 entries, then 8, then 16, then 32, so I had to try to fix that issues at least, in addition to the missing normally available saplogon.ini connections.
I went to the new location, in %APPDATA%\SAP\Common\, and found the two files you identified above: SAPUILandscapeGlobal.xml and SAPUILandscape.xml
I tried to 'clean' them up but they were changing dynamically as I logged in so I had no success.
I shut all SAP logon pads and NWBC client; I removed both SAPUILandscapeGlobal.xml and SAPUILandscape.xml from %APPDATA%\SAP\Common\ and placed them in a safe location.
Once I restarted the NWBC 5.0 client it appears that the two XML files were regenerated and everything appears to be working hunky-dorey now, if I may.
Thank you again for your post. I'm sure we would be left scratching our heads without your (indirect) support!!!
Nice blog Perry. I too had some of the problems you mentioned after I installed and used the NWBC 5.0 for the first time. I changed the SAPUILandscapeGlobal.xml but it didn't fix the Group server logon issue. I had to edit the SAPUILandscape.xml as follows:
I saved both the files and restarted the NWBC. This time the logon to Group server entry was through.
I used the following tool to generate uuid: Online UUID Generator Tool
Thanks for the leads. 🙂
In Windows/Powershell you can simply use '[guid]::NewGuid()' to create a GUID.
Jürgen
Very good article for me as a beginner.
A couple of questions:
1. Why do we need 2 entries for Message Servers as u mentioned in your fix? Can the issue be resolved via only one entry?
2. I am facing one issue where I am not able to login to SAP using Group/Server selection. However, if I remove "SAPUILandscapeGlobal" and "SAPUILandscape" files (from the directory where they are created automatically), I can login to SAP server. Why am I facing this behaviour?
Thanks.