SAP AG

Housekeeping for Business Process

Monitoring Alert Reporting
Document Version 1.0 November 2011

Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2
Housekeeping in Business Intelligence for BPMon Alerts ............................................................... 2
Identify the Data Volume of the Info Cube ..................................................................................... 3
Deletion of Info Cube Data .............................................................................................................. 5
Deletion of Data Store Objects (DSO) ............................................................................................. 7
Deletion of Data Packages from the Persistent Staging Area (PSA) ................................................ 8
Housekeeping in the SAP Solution Manager ................................................................................. 10
Reorganization of BPMon Alerts ................................................................................................... 10
Reorganization of the transfer table (DSWP_BPM_BI_EXTN)....................................................... 12
Summary........................................................................................................................................ 13

2011-11-01

Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

Introduction
When using Business Process Monitoring (BPMon) alerts are created. These are written
to BPMon specific data base tables. If you want to do Alert Reporting on BPMon
Alerts, you have option Keep Data for BI (Find more details how to setup BPMon
Alert Reporting in the Service Marketplace alias /BPM Media Library Technical
Information Setup Guide - BPMon Trend Analysis). In this case the alerts data are
copied and transferred from SAP Solution Manager to cube 0SM_BPM of SAP Business
Intelligence (BI).
The following sections will explain how to avoid unnecessary amounts of data. This
might help you to set up a housekeeping process according to your individual needs.

Housekeeping in Business Intelligence for BPMon Alerts

When using Business Process Monitoring (BPMon) Alert Reporting, it is beneficial to
think about a housekeeping process for the data stored in the
BW Info Cube 0SM_BPM and
related Object Structures, used to fill the Info Cube, which are the
o Data Store Object (DSO) and
o Data Packages in the Persisting Staging Area (PSA).
The following graphic illustrates the integration of data warehousing and its function
areas into the architecture of SAP BW.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

With the help of a defined housekeeping process, the average access time to the data
serving BPMon Alert Reporting as source can be optimized and the growth of data
storage for the Info Cube in the SAP Solution Manager can be managed.

Depending on the amount of data loaded to the cube for BPMon Alert Reporting Info
Cube 0SM_BPM the data shall be deleted or archived. This needs to be triggered
manually by deleting old requests which are not needed any more from the Info Cube via
the BW Administration Workbench.

Identify the Data Volume of the Info Cube

-

Call transaction RSA1.

Open the Modeling section on the left hand side of the window.
Click on Info Provider. On the right hand side all Info Providers will be shown.
Open the tree structure at SAP Solution Manager (0SM_SSM) SAP
Solution Manager Business Process Monitoring (0SM_BPM) Business
Process Monitoring Data (0SM_BPM).
Right-click the Business Process Monitoring Data to open the context menu and
choose Manage.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

On the right hand side open tab Contents and click on button Fact Table.
On the new screen (which can be reached via transaction SE16 for table
/BI0/FSM_BPM as well) click on button Number of Entries.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

The displayed number is the number of data records (= Alerts) in the fact table of
the Info Cube 0SM_BPM. The performance of a query depends on many factors.
One of these factors is the amount of data in the fact table. Therefore you might
consider to delete data from the cube, if there are not needed anymore.

Deletion of Info Cube Data

If you found out, that the performance of your queries and the data load to the cube are
too slowly, and you stored data in the cube that you actually do not need for reporting,
you have two options to reduce the data volume in the cube.
1) Archiving
2) Deletion
If you decide not to delete, but to archive your data in the BPMon Info Cube, please refer
to the document How to ... Archive in BW.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

If you decide to delete data, be aware that you shall delete a range of specified requests
and not the complete Info Cube contents. The deletion is done as follows:
-

Call the BW Administration Workbench which can be accessed via transaction

RSA1.
Open the Modeling section on the left hand side of the window and navigate
through the path Info Provider. On the right hand side all Info Providers will be
shown.
Open the tree structure at SAP Solution Manager (0SM_SSM) SAP
Solution Manager Business Process Monitoring (0SM_BPM) Business
Process Monitoring Data (0SM_BPM).
Right-click the Business Process Monitoring Data to open the context menu and
choose Manage.

On the right hand side of the screen open tab Requests and display the select a
time frame. Within this list, you have an overview of all available requests in the
Info Cube which contain data for BPMon alert reporting and of course its
creation date. The time range of this requests can be adjusted due to your needs,
just enter another time interval below the list and press the Refresh button once.
In order to delete a request, just mark it in the list and press the Delete button to
start a background job taking care of the data deletion. In a first step, the status of
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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

the selected request is changed from green to red until the deletion ended and
the request is finally removed from the list. Note: You will not be able to delete
any request, if older requests still exist.
Of course you can select more than one request to be deleted at one point in time,
but be aware that with each additional request a higher amount of workload is
generated for the background processing executing this deleting task. So we
strongly recommend to test at first the runtime for the deletion of one single
request to estimate the possibility to select multiple requests for deletion in
parallel.

The execution of the background job can be observed via transaction SM37 and SM50.
The number of entries deleted from the Info Cube can be evaluated directly from the
request list, because for each request stored in the Info Cube the number of entries
included is mentioned.
The size of the Info Cube can always be checked via its fact table /BI0/F0SM_BPM
accessible in transaction SE16 using the Number of entries-function ( Identify the
Data Volume of the Info Cube).

Deletion of Data Store Objects (DSO)

A DSO is a flat table structure which is used in order to write the data to the cube. If you
do not consider doing reporting on the DSO, the DSO data are obsolete after the data
have been uploaded to the cube successfully. This means that all DSO records can be
deleted completely, when the delta upload process chain finished processing.
-

Call transaction RSA1.

Open the Modeling section on the left hand side of the window.
Click on Info Provider. On the right hand side all Info Providers will be shown.
Open the tree structure at SAP Solution Manager (0SM_SSM) SAP
Solution Manager Business Process Monitoring (0SM_BPM) Business
Process Monitoring Data (0SM_BPM) Business Process Monitoring DSO
(0SM_OBPM).
Right-click on Business Process Monitoring DSO to open the context menu and
choose Delete Data.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

This will delete all the DSO data.

Deletion of Data Packages from the Persistent Staging Area (PSA)

When uploading data to an InfoCube the data packages arrive in BW first at the so called
Persistent Staging Area (PSA). When the process chain has been finished successfully,
the data in the PSA are obsolete and can be deleted.
-

Call transaction RSA1OLD.

Open the Modeling section on the left hand side of the window.
Click on PSA. On the right hand side all PSAs will be shown.
Open the tree structure at PSA (PSATABTREE) Unassigned Nodes
(NODESNOT CONNECTED) BPM Data (0SM_DSWPBI_BPM).
Right-click on BPM Data to open the context menu and choose Delete PSA
Data.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

In the next screen you can see the Number of Requests in PSA DB Table and
you can schedule a frequent job in order to delete processed requests, e.g. older
than a particular time frame.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

Housekeeping in the SAP Solution Manager

The BPMon Alerts are filled to the Info Cube via several steps and structures. Of cause
also these data structures have to be reorganized frequently as well.

The job chain of the InfoCube picks up the data from the transfer table

Reorganization of BPMon Alerts

The BPMon alert reorganization of the tables DSWP_BPM_ALERTS and
DSWP_BPM_INDX is done via program DSWP_BPM_REORGANISATION. This
report does four types of housekeeping. The retention periods are taken from business
process customizing settings or hard coded.
a) Reorganization (Deletion, Aggregation) of BPMon alert data
The customizing settings, which are used for the reorganization of BPMon alerts, can
be maintained in the BPMon Setup Session:
- Call transaction DSWP. Go to Operations Setup Solution Monitoring
Business Process Monitoring Setup Business Process Monitoring
- Alternatively call transaction SOLMAN_WORKCENTER tab Business
Process Operations Common Tasks Setup Business Process
Monitoring
- Select in the check-tree Business Processes
Generation/Activation/Deactivation
- Find the retention periods for BPMon Alerts on tab Process Specific Settings.
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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

o Reorganization time 1 is the number of days or the retention period for

which BPMon alerts are kept (as transparent raw alert data in table
DSWP_BPM_ALERTS)
o Reorganization time 2 is the number of days after which the BPMon
Alerts are copied (from table DSWP_BMP_ALERTS) and stored in an
aggregated form in another table (table DSWP_BPM_INDX, relid MO
and context = AG + <Monitoring Type> + <System ID> +
<Session Number>). Attention: Make sure that you do not delete the
transparent raw alert data (Reorganization time 1) before aggregating them
(Reorganization time 2.)
o Reorganization time 3 is the number of days or the retention period for
which the aggregated BPMon alerts are kept (in table
DSWP_BPM_INDX).
b) Deletion of applications logs for BPMon data collectors
All logs older than 2 days are deleted. The retention period is hard coded.
c) Deletion of application logs for BPMon activation and deactivation.
All logs which are older than 30 days are deleted, but at least the
log with most recent creation data is kept. The retention period is hard coded.
d) Confirmation of BPMon alerts for CRM service desk messages
-

The report contains the functionality to process the confirmation of aggregated

BPMon alerts which are related to a CRM service desk message. If the alerts
could not be confirmed during the close of a CRM service desk message they will
be stored in table DSWP_BPM_INDX for the solution and key
UCA<MONID><SY-DATUM><SY-UZEIT>.
If the confirmation is successful these BPMon alerts are deleted from
DSWP_BPM_INDX.

There is no reference to a retention period.

The report DSWP_BPM_REORGANISATION shall be executed once a day in
background mode to start the data reorganization for Business Process Monitoring for all
solutions which contain monitoring data. This is necessary with the first activation of a
business process in the BPM setup session.
The standard name of the job is SAP BPMON REORGANISATION.
Long-running jobs can be cancelled and canceled jobs can be restarted without any
problems. Of cause you shall check for the cancellation reason.
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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

Reorganization of the transfer table (DSWP_BPM_BI_EXTN)

Report RDSWP_BI_BPM_EXTRACT does mainly include the functionality to copy
comprised BPMon alerts to the BI transfer table (DSWP_BPM_BI_EXTN), but also the
functionality to delete those entries, which have already been transferred to the Info
Cube.

By using the check boxes Delete you do not only avoid that data are loaded
redundantly to the Info Cube, but also keeping small the transfer tables to get good
response times.
Consider that the BPMon alerts shall be only deleted from the transfer tables after they
have been caught by the BW process chain and have been stored successfully to the Info
Cube.
IMPORTANT: We strongly recommend using the Delete Delta in Extraction flag
in the extraction job to delete extracted data written to the transfer table to reduce the
amount of data in the system.

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Housekeeping for Business Process Monitoring Alert Reporting

Summary
If you use BPMon with or without Alert Reporting, i.e. without the option Keep Data
for BI, the data growth caused by the alert data shall be controlled by defining
reorganization times in the BPMon Setup Environment and by running the report
DSWP_BPM_REORGANISATION.
If you use Alert Reporting you should additionally, delete frequently
- Data Store Objects (DSO)
- Data packages of the Persistent Staging Area (PSA) that have been processed
successfully
- Info Cube requests, which might not be needed anymore for analysis.
The performance of BI queries on the Info Cube is influenced by the selected and the
total amount of data from the Cube. Anyway be aware that those requests remain in the
cube being essential for a useful analysis according to your business needs.

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