1861180 - Customer instructions and best practice for collecting a BI Platform 4.x end to end trace

Symptom

• Active Global Support has requested for you to collect an end to end trace for a problematic workflow
• This note outlines the steps you should follow to collect a useful end to end trace from your SAP BI Platform 4.x landscape if you do not have Solution Manager diagnostics.
• End to end tracing allows SAP Support to identify root cause by analyzing a unified log view from all nodes in the BI Platform landscape
• This note is applicable to workflows reproduced from browser based clients (e.g. BI Launchpad)

Environment

• SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.0
• SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.1

Resolution

 

PREPARE THE BI LANDSCAPE

Prepare your BI landscape to make sure that when traces are generated, we are keeping enough trace files to capture the whole workflow.
On each node in your BI Platform 4.x landscape, make the following change:
1.  Browse to the following directory:

WINDOWS <INSTALL_PATH>\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\conf UNIX <INSTALL_PATH>/sap_bobj/enterprise_xi40/conf

2.  Make a backup copy of bo_trace.ini
3.  Edit bo_trace.ini and change the value for the parameter keep_num to 20 (for Webi workflows, use a keep_num value of 50).  Also update the value for parameter append to false.

keep_num = 20; append = false;

4.  Save the changes and repeat steps 1-3 for each BI node in the landscape.

GENERATE THE TRACE

1.  Download the correct SAP Client Plug-in version according to your version of Internet Explorer

VERSION	PLUG-IN DOWNLOAD	SAP NOTE
Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10	SAPClientPlugin_1.26_x86.zip	SAP NOTE 1435190
Internet Explorer 11	SAPClientPlugin.rar	SAP NOTE 1608231

  IMPORTANT: Always use the x86 version of the SAP Client Plug-in when tracing with Internet Explorer (regardless of the OS bit version)

2.  Unzip the SAP Client Plug-in to the client where you will be executing the problematic workflow
3.  Close any open web browsers before launching the SAP Client Plug-in
4.  Browse to the location where you unzipped the SAP Client Plug-in, then right click on plugin-starter-gui.exe and choose 'run as administrator'.
5.  Set the 'Application' option to Microsoft Internet Explorer and click Launch
     
6.  Under the "Business Transaction Name" property choose a descriptive name that describes the workflow that you are capturing and set the 'Next Step TraceLevel' to High
     
7.  Before you start your end to end trace, you should first queue up the browser to the beginning of the problematic workflow that you wish to trace.
8.  When you are ready to begin your workflow, click the "Start Transaction" button then execute only the workflow you are trying to trace.  Observe that the number of sent bytes/received bytes will increase if the trace is working.

It is best practice to only trace the transactions where the problem is occurring. Try to avoid additional browsing and clicking as this will generate extraneous logs and make analysis more difficult

9.  As soon as you have completed your workflow press the "Stop Transaction" button.  You can ignore the message "Settings are not valid" as it relates to the SMD Agent settings for Solution Manager.
10. Click OK to close the SAP Client Plug-in window.

COLLECT THE TRACES

There are three types of traces you must collect for SAP Support.

• SAP Client Plug-in traces
• BI Platform server traces
• BI Platform web application traces

Before you start, first create a new temporary folder on your client.  This folder will be used to store all of the trace files generated on our BI landscape.  In this example, the temporary folder will be C:\e2e_traces

Collect SAP Client Plug-in logs

1.  In the same directory where you executed the SAP Client Plug-in, browse to the /log directory.
2.  Inside of the log directory will be a folder that is named after the value that you specified as "Business Transaction Name".  Copy this folder to the central temporary folder that you created at the beginning of this article (for example: C:\e2e_traces)
     

 

Collect BI server logs

For each node where you are running a Server Intelligence Agent do the following:
1.  Browse to the BI Platform 4.x logging directory in the location

WINDOWS <INSTALL_PATH>\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\logging UNIX <INSTALL_PATH>/sap_bobj/logging

2.  Change the view to details
     
3.  Filter for files using the pattern *.glf
     WINDOWS
     
     UNIX
      
4.  Sort by date so that the newest logs are shown at the top of the list
     
5.  Copy all glf files generated in the last 4 days and paste these logs in the temporary folder created on your client machine in step 1 (C:\e2e_traces)

It is important that you collect at least 4 days worth of traces since the time stamp shown will not always be updated to the current date

6.  Repeat steps 1 to 5 for each node in your BI landscape that is running a Server Intelligence Agent and copy these logs to the central temporary log folder

For Promotion Management / Lifecycle Management promotion job tracing, you should collect these traces from all SIA nodes on the SOURCE, DESTINATION, and LCM CMS landscapes

Collect BI Platform web application logs

For each node where you are running a Java Application Server (e.g. Apache Tomcat, Oracle Weblogic, IBM Websphere, etc), complete the following steps to collect the Web Application Server logs.  The BI Platform 4.x web application logs may be generated in different locations depending on the application server you are using and the user account in which the application server is running under.
BI Platform 4.x web application logs are captured in folders with the name beginning with SBOP.  For example, the BI Launchpad logs are stored in the folder,C:\SBOPWebApp_BILaunchpad_10.169.1.110_8080
1.  On each application server node, check the following locations for the BI Platform 4.x web application logs

WINDOWS <INSTALL_DRIVE>:\SBOP* <INSTALL_PATH>:\SAP BusinessObjects\Tomcat 6\*.glf <INSTALL_PATH>:\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\logging\SBOP* C:\windows\system32\configure\<systemprofile>\SBOP* C:\users\<appserver_user>\SBOP* UNIX $HOME/SBOP* <INSTALL_PATH>/sap_bobj/tomcat/bin/SBOP*

2.  Copy the folders with the name beginning with SBOP* to your central temporary log folder.  For example: C:\e2e_traces

SUBMIT TRACES TO SAP SUPPORT

1.  After you have collected all of the required information, zip up the central temporary log folder.  For example: C:\e2e_traces
2.  SAP Support will provide you with a SAP Box container.  Upload the zip file to the SAP Box container provided.

Send SAP Support the entire set of traces, not the filtered view. It may be necessary for SAP Support to analyze traces generated without the SAP Passport transaction id in order to determine root cause

RESTORE BO_TRACE SETTINGS

On each node in your BI Platform 4.x landscape, make the following change:
1. Browse to the following directory:

WINDOWS <INSTALL_PATH>\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\conf UNIX <INSTALL_PATH>/sap_bobj/conf

2. Restore the backup copy of BO_trace.ini