Significance of ST14 – SAP BW performance improvement tool

The objective of the document is to give information about the DVM (Data Volume Management) report details by using the TCODE ST14 and how to decrease the utilized database memory which will improve the performance of BW system

Introduction

DVM report basically contains information on how to improve the performance of your SAP BW system by decreasing the database size. To be precise, this gives information on the top PSA tables, DSO active and change log tables, infocubes, aggregates, other basis related tables.

The information could be given as a report by SAP when your customer requests for it. Or if you have solution manager, you could get this as a self-service tool. Or you could use the tcode ST14 to get all the relevant information.

We will concentrate on how to get this information from ST14 and make maximum use of it to improve performance and increase the available memory in database.

ST14 – Application Analysis

As the description of the Tcode says, it is used to analyse the below applications based on the size of database tables.

When you access ST14, the option will appear to choose the application BW, BO or security optimization.

Each application will hold its relevant information. As a BI consultant, we should choose the first two to get more information.

As this is just a view, we could click any one of these based on the information that you need.

If you are accessing ST14 for the time, whichever option you choose, it will show the below screen as there was no analysis done earlier. If you click on the Schedule Job option, it will give you an option to schedule the job to start analysis (you will also get to know what information will be available under each application)

How to schedule a job for analysis

ST14 doesn’t give runtime data. You should schedule a job to analyse the tables and when it is done, you will have handful information to increase your system’s memory space.

To start analysing, click on Schedule Job and the below screen will be displayed with options to choose. We should select from the below list. Basis Data (Top objects) will give you the maximum information that you need related to top BI objects.

Client number, a title for analysis should be filled and should click on schedule job. You could select scopes from all three applications. There is no restriction for this.

Below is the list of scope under basis component. Determine Top DB objects, Maintenance Assessment will give you the required information. DVM Strategy is also an important one.

There is no hard core rule that you should run only the scope that’s highlighted in this document. The most meaningful information for a BI consultant will be retrieved when we run these. So you could even select everything in this list (but it might take some time).

This is the scope list from Security optimization which we don’t concentrate as a BI consultant.

History of Analysis

If you want to see an analyses that was already done previously, click on the second option Analyses and it will give the below screen.

This will give the date wise information on which application was analysed and more information about what was analysed in individual applications. (There will be no entry if there was no DVM analysis done previously)

If you expand each one of them, it will show you the information on what was the assessment done along with the outcome. If you click on the assessment name (here Basis Data (Top Objects), it will give you the result of that assessment.

Analysis Result

The result will be shown as below. If you click on the details, it will show the objects list.

The above information will be more than enough for clean up the system.

Top 30 PSA

Maintenance Assessment result will be displayed as below from which you could even see the history of database size. This is also an important information.