Performance issue with Adobe forms

[former_member1272535]

Dear SAP Experts,

We have the following issue/requirement from our client. The client is on SAP ECC 6.0 - production environment.

The client is highlighting  performance issue while accessing the adobe forms for HR and FI business process ( both static and interactive ).

                Examples are

    FI – Invoice Approvals

                HR – Job Salary Change

The client is asking us to provide best practices surrounding:

1.       How to improve the performance of the adobe forms while accessing in SAP.

2.       Is there any other technology which we can use in SAP to replace the adobe forms which has better performance factor.

3.       Are there solutions such as webdynpro floor plan manager, UI Fiori which can be alternately used?

Regards,

Sakthi

[SandySingh]

Hi Sakthi

Please elaborate on the design of Adobe forms. Are these interactive Adobe forms - ISR and HCM process and forms?

Regards

sandy

[pavan_prabhu]

Hello Priya,

     Adobe forms are easy to develop and much more comfortable than SAP Scripts and Smartforms. Initially they are a bit difficult but once you have your hands on, they are the most simplest things in ABAP.

Performance in Adobe forms is a mix of both fine tuning the Layout as well as back end coding.

Performance in Adobe forms cannot be done overnight. A lot of care has to be taken during the initial stage of development.

As far as my experience is concerned, please consider the below points while developing SAP Adobe forms.

1) Avoid Scripting (Javascript/Formcalc) as much as possible inside the form. It drastically reduces the performance and makes the form to execute slower. If you still want to use scripting(which cannot be avoided for some requirements), use Formcalc since it is comparatively faster than JavaScript.

2) Try to avoid the coding inside the Form Interface. You can always handle the maximum coding in the Driver program and pass it to the form.

3) Use Form Caching.

For forms that have fixed layout, its a good way to increase the performance of form rendering. In the layout, go to Form Properties. Then Click on Defaults tab and select Allow Form Rendering To Be Cached On Server. Then Click OK.

For forms that have flowable or dynamic layout, render the forms on the client side because it improves performance.

Last but not the least, please go through the below post by which is worth a read at least once.

[ChrisSolomon]

A few more points to add (and not all of yours I agree with but that is neither here nor there)....

1. Run the ADS instance on it's OWN server. It is a resource hog. Also, if you are using ADS for mass printing, look at options for running several.

2. Avoid long drop-down value lists. (Yes, this gets it's own point because people abuse it. A drop-down list of 20 items is ok...of 1000+ items? Your users will want to hunt you down.

3. Remember the first rule of Adobe form development...."a form  is NOT an application!". Do not try to make it do everything under the sun. We have better tools for things like that.

4. Consider your users access to the forms. When you say "slow", is it possibly on the client side? Slow connection?

5. Tune tune tune! There are guides for ADS tuning. Use them!

might have done ADS tuning a time or two so maybe he can chime in.

[Matt_Fraser]

As far as ADS tuning, I would not say that I'm any kind of expert. I agree that it works best on a dedicated server. Doing so not only isolates the load from other sources, but it allows you to install it on the latest and greatest J2EE engine (i.e. NetWeaver 7.4 with latest SPS), which will generally be an improvement over earlier releases. Yes, you can use ADS on a NW 7.4 instance in an ERP 6.04 landscape.

Beyond isolating it and upgrading it, tuning is for the most part like tuning any J2EE system. Add additional serverX instances on the system, give them enough heap memory, etc. Beyond that, Note 1522165 (Recommended configuration for central ADS) goes into ADS-specific tuning considerations, and Note 1462986 (ADS Load Balancing) has recommendations and pointers to online documentation for setting up load balancing (whether among several server nodes on one instance, or several different servers -- either way, it basically says use Web Dispatcher).

I did just finish a project for migrating ADS onto dedicated hardware (and upgrading to 7.4), but didn't blog about it because there are plenty of other documents and blogs out there already talking about how to install ADS. However, our form usage is fairly small -- a single custom form, though it's used daily, but not heavily -- and the annual W-2 print run, and that's about it.

Regards,

Matt