Portal Activity Report - timeout and huge load on ldap

[ChristiaanBITBW]

Hello,

I created an activity report to count the users of a certain group which have logged on to our portal in the last 2 years.

Unfortunatly this iView times out after 5 minutes (time limit of iview has exceeded, or something similar). I then embedded the iView into a page and set the properties com.sap.portal.page.PageTimeout to -1, and allow_browser (client-side-caching) to no, but unfortunatly this has no effect and time out occurs again.
Then our ldap administrator informed me of massive requests coming from our portal, causing a huge load on the ldap. And it seems that these requests continue even after the iView has timed out.

My questions are following:
1) How can I get the activity report not to time out, but keep going until a result can be shown?
2) How can I trace or monitor the started activity report, and if necessary, stop it?

Thanks in advance,

Christiaan Hilkman

[michal_zilcha-lang · Accepted solution]

Hi Christiaan,

In general, using "Filtering by Group" option checks all the users that were reported, whether they belong to the requested group. This check sends requests to the UME, which reflects in the LDAP load.

More information is described in SAP note 1032984 - Portal Activity Report - "Filtering by group" Limitation.

During this year some improvements were done in the Portal Activity Report when filtering by group - See SAP note 1735670 - EP activity report filter by group performance improvement.

If you are using NW7.0, and you are using an older SP than the SP with the correction, then you can deploy the latest SDA that contains the fix - all the information on how and what to install is described in SAP note 1084379 - Portal Activity Report - Latest Version (SDA file).

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Best regards,

Michal Zilcha-Lang

[ChristiaanBITBW]

Hi Michal,

thanks for the SAP notes, but since we have SAP NetWeaver EP 7.01 SP6, and an update is not in sight, I will have to try to generate smaller reports with longer timeouts 🙂

Do you also know how I can trace or monitor the started activity report, and if necessary, stop it?

Thanks for your help,

Christiaan

[michal_zilcha-lang]

Hi Christiaan,

Due to the fact that you are using EP7.01 the latest SDA file can be deployed on your portal.

The SDA is attached to SAP note 1084379.

As Portal Activity report is a standalone application, it can be deployed on your SP6 installation, as basically it does not depend on other applications, and other applications does not depend on it.

This way you will have also the performance improvement mentioned by me in the previous reply.

Regarding how to stop the queries to the database - doesn't it stop when you close the iView?

I would expect that the queries will stop when you stop running the Portal Component, as eventually the requests are generated in the portal component code itself, and if you don't run it, the queries to the DB should stop as well.

Regarding the monitoring of the Activity Report, if you mean how to turn on the trace, then following are the relevant steps on how this can be done:

1. Enter the Visual Administrator tool
2. Navigate to server->services->Log Configurator.
3. Under the "Categories" tab go to System -> Server and raise the severity to "All".
4. Under the "Locations" tab go to com.sap.portal.activityreport and raise the severity to "All".
5. Save to all server nodes.

Now reproduce the flow until you reach the error.
Go to the default trace on the server node this flow happened.

See SAP Note 1596214 - How to find the latest default trace file of the NW AS Java right after reproducing an issue

In the latest default trace file you should find the relevant information.

Please make sure to change the severity of the logs and traces back to "Error", as it reduces the portal's performance.

Thanks & regards,

Michal Zilcha-Lang

[ChristiaanBITBW]

Hi Michal,

I understood from SAP note 1084379, that the SDA is only released and tested for EP 7.01 as of SP9. I will look into this again, thanks.

Regarding stopping the query or process, I was told from the LDAP admins that the load continued even after the iView timed out. So that is why I want an oppertunity to cancel the query. So the question is, where can I see (monitor) the running process and stop it?
The word trace was a bit misleading here 🙂

Thanks for your help,

Christiaan

[michal_zilcha-lang]

Hi Christiaan,

The note refers to 7.00 SP9 and not 7.01 SP9. NW7.0 EhP1 that you are using is perfectly relevant for the latest SDA.

Regarding the timeout, it is displayed on the client, but the server side is still running. Did you try closing the portal component/iView that is running?

Thanks & regards,

Michal Zilcha-Lang

[ChristiaanBITBW]

Hi Michal,

I was even logged off from the portal when the LDAP admin called me and said
that there was a load and still is.

That’s why I want to know where I can see the actual process and, if necessary,
stop it.

Thanks,

Christiaan

[michal_zilcha-lang]

Hi Christiaan,

Do you know whether it is one query that takes time?

If it is only one query, then it cannot be stopped from the portal, as the process is running on the DB server.

If those are different queries that are launched from the portal then restarting the application that runs the queries will do the trick.

The application is called "com.sap.portal.activityreport.frontend".

This application includes the Activity Report portal component, which is the report.

I would suggest to make sure that the queries that run on the DB are actually those that calculate the report, and not the queries that flush the data at the top of the hour, or the aggregation process that aggregates that data and inserts the values to the tables.

I am not a DB expert, but I cannot stop wandering whether there is an option for the DBA to stop the query from the DB side...

Thanks & regards,

Michal

[ChristiaanBITBW]

Hello Michal,

thanks for your help and suggestions.

I will now concentrate on deploying the SDA provided by SAP note 1084379 first.

Thanks again,

Christiaan

[ChristiaanBITBW]

Hello Michal,

we installed the SDA provided by SAP note 1084379, but unfortunately the report still aborts with a timeout after 15 minutes and also the load on the LDAP increases from 0,5% to 5% and higher.
And that for a query of a group with only 3 members and a period of 10 weeks!

Since we need this report for 54 users and the last 2 years, and getting this report to run is taking too much time, I gave up.

But thanks for your efforts anyway,
Christiaan

[michal_zilcha-lang]

Hi Christiaan,

I apologize for the late reply.

The reason for the long time is because it collects all the rows in the tables that match the time period requested, and then compares for each user in the row, whether it is included in the group.

If you have a lot of rows that are returned in the resultSet, then it might take time.

In case of specific queries, like in your example - when you know the names of the users, you can just query the tables directly from the DB - just select the rows

"WHERE TIMESTAMPHOUR >= ? AND TIMESTAMPHOUR < ? AND LOGONID = <specific user name>".

The documentation about what are the columns of the tables can be found in the formal documentation: 

SAP Library - Portal

I hope it helps.

Thanks & regards,

Michal Zilcha-Lang

[ChristiaanBITBW]

Hello Michal,

thanks for your continues support and bringing in such good and helpful advices.
The query is helpful and seems to respond much better than the report itself,
which btw I never got to work on productive system.

Thanks again,

Christiaan