Troubleshooting tips while working with CPI-DS

Introduction

Cloud Platform Integration for Data Services (CPI-DS) is the recommended tool to integrated with Integrated Business Planning (IBP). There are addons available which makes the integration with IBP using CPI-DS easy and reduces go live time.

I faced few challenges while integrating IBP with S4HANA using CPI-DS. This blog post will help beginners in troubleshooting while integrating with IBP

Troubleshooting Tips

1. Using IBP_MD_S4_ERP_AddOn to load master data from S4 to IBP

While using this standard template for load master data from SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA on premise to SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP). In this you will find data flows for almost all kinds of master data to be loaded in IBP.

Tips:

1. Wherever you see a description fields in the extractors (eg. PRDESCR, LOCDESCR) check the logic in place for replacing special characters by NULL.

Existing logic by SAP uses translate() function, which has program error currently.

SAP description logic

Error which you will see for this is not explanatory. See below

Workaround is to remove translate() with your own logic.

2. Check value of global variable for time profile id ($G_TIMEPROFILEID_ERP) and time profile level ($G_TIMEPROFILELEVEL_ERP) before running the standard flow otherwise you might encounter error in flow.

Also it is recommended to set $G_LOAD_TIME value to SYSUTCDATE()

2. Error posting data to S4HANA from IBP through RFC.

While posting data from IBP to S4HANA using CPI using RFC if face the below error, please be ensured that there is not error in the flow. Its a known bug from SAP (note-2934476)

This error happens when we try to edit the flow.

Error:

2020-06-11 17:01:29 (E)(-1:-1) IMP-100 Import ATL
(E) (26829:1454610240) PAR-010102: Initialization
Syntax error at line <128>: <SELECT __RFC_FUNCTION S4H_Dev..”ZPTPI_PR_CREATE”[](Transform4.I_INPUT)[I_INPUT] FROM Transform4
SET(“distinct_run_as_separate_process”=’no’,>: near <]> found <‘]’> expecting <identifier, a quoted identifier>.
/usr/sap/DataServicesAgent/log/vYsAIIS_g3GXVpzLjQtf3b20200611_17129537_365.atl – 1 error(s), 0 warning(s).

This is known bug check SAP note 2934476. This is not fixed till this Version:1.0.11.3899 of CPI-DS which I am using currently.

WORKAROUND:
1) Make sure to edit and design your data flows as much as you can.
2) Delete the old, re-add, and re-map RFC function calls using the same transform name. Save the task.
3) Run the task. You will not see the syntax error.
4) If you don’t need to edit, please don’t click “Edit” data flow and use “View” mode instead. The “Edit” mode will cause the current issue.
5) If you have to edit the data flow, please do step #2 again.
If you have a working task, do not edit it again. Otherwise, you will have to delete, re-add, re-map the RFC function call.

Conclusion

These tips will be useful for the beginners to resolve the issue quickly as the errors in these certain cases are not very explanatory.

Happy Learning.

Akash