SAP GUI with SNC logon and Hummingbird Exceed - SAP GUI window size issue

[tim_alsop]

We have discovered an issue when SAP GUI 7.10 is used to logon via SNC and Hummingbird Exceed is used on the same workstation to logon to a UNIX system either via x-windows or telnet.

When the user logs onto a UNIX system using Hummingbird Exceed, then uses SAP GUI to logon to a SAP system with SNC authentication, the SAP GUI authentication works, but the favourites list is not fully displayed and has to be resized before any of the entries are available.

Has anybody else seen this issue, and do they know if there is a fix available ? We wondered if there might be an issue with fonts or some other sort of conflict between Exceed and SAP GUI, but it is strange that the problem only occurs if SNC authentication is being used, and when userid+password is used to logon to SAP the problem does not occur.

Cheers,

Tim

[Former Member]

Hello Tim,

That sounds like a session manager bug for using favourites in the user menu. Not a completely unreasonable one, as SAP would have difficulty to predict and test which types of favourites are added in how many nodes of a specific user preference.

Does the same occur if the user has a role with a menu?

Have you considered creating a role with an intuitive menu for these users instead of setting up favourites?

My understanding is that the system will look for a customizing switch for the session manager (see table SSM_CUST) to present the menu. That should always work sustainably.

Cheers and nice to hear from you again,

Julius

[tim_alsop]

Julius,

Thankyou for your reply. I want to better understand what you are saying, so can you explain why you think the favourites menu displays correctly when the logon is not using SNC, and also, when Exceed is not being used at the same time as the SAP GUI logon ? For example, why is Hummingbird Exceed involved in a logon to a SAP system using SAP GUI with/without SNC auth ?

Thanks,

Tim

[Former Member]

Hello Tim,

No idea about the Hummingbird, sorry (I don't use it).

I was merely suggesting that you could eliminate the problem, instead of solving it, by creating a menu for the role which the user has.

Infact, you can even force the menu when the user logs on.

Does the same symptom occur for the users with defined menus, as for those who create their own favourites independently of their access points which you have described?

Cheers,

Julius

[tim_alsop]

Julius,

Thankyou. I understand your thoughts on this issue better now. Anyway, I will ask the customer who is getting this problem to check if the problem still occurs if the user has a defined menu instead of the default.

Regards,

Tim

[Former Member]

Hello Tim,

It did cross my mind that the user has SAP_ALL or similar...

but only uses favourites...

and wants the convenience of SSO...

You might also want to suggest a role to your customer with the entry points in a menu (the favourites which they use...), which then excludes access which the user does not require (or even presents a risk to themselves)...

There is more to SAP than just "authentication". Just a thought

Here are some infos on using menus:

and

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/cf/bf0d3dbd82fe2fe10000000a114084/content.htm

<curiosity> Can you identify any criteria via which the SNC logon makes the favourite or the node visible? That would be interesting for me, as it might even be correct behavior (even the sizing refit).</curiosity>

Cheers,

Julius

[tim_alsop]

Julius,

Thankyou again for your help.

I have asked the customer to do some more tests and I will report back.

Also, I setup a similar environment and when I logon using Exceed HostExplorer and logon using SAP GUI and using same SNC library I don't get any issues with the favourites menu. The issue seems to occur on customers system, but not my system I will work with them to find out what differs.

Take care,

Tim

[WolfgangJanzen]

Well, that problem really sounds weird. I suspect that there's something else (other than SNC) which is causing the problem.

@Tim: when you tried to reproduce the problem, did you use the same SNC product, the same Exceed version, the same SAPGUI version and the same Windows operating system version (-> windows manager)? Also check if SAPGUI is operated in "accessibility mode".

Cheers, Wolfgang

[tim_alsop]

Wolfgang,

It is nice to hear from you again. Thankyou for your input on this issue.

Yes, I agree it is very wierd ... I used SAP GUI 7.10 patch 3 and the customer is using patch 2 version so I have asked if they can upgrade to patch 3. I used Exceed 2008 (version 13) and customer is using version 12 (I have asked if they can try version 13 to see if this fixes the issue for them). I do not have easy access to version 12 so I was unable to test with this version. The operating system version is same in both cases (XP SP2). Yes, the SNC library is the same version.

I remember a problem like this with SAP GUI 6.40 at a specific patch level, and it went away after the customer applied patches to SAP FrontEnd. We had about 5 customers who had this problem and it was not related to Exceed, but in all cases it went away when they upgraded the FrontEnd software. I think this issue with Exceed must be similar (since symptoms are same), but not identical to the issuse we observed before with the 6.40 version.

Thanks,

Tim

[WolfgangJanzen]

Well, Exceed is a bit special since it comes with its own "virtual desktop" tool.

But updating SAPGUI is a good idea, anyway.

Cheers, Wolfgang

PS: Happy New Year to everybody ...

[tim_alsop]

It appears that the issue is not due to Exceed - the customer reported that they can now reproduce the problem without Exceed being used. The problem seems to happen when the workstation is heavily used and lots of applications are open at same time. Previously, Exceed was one of the apps being used and it was therefore considered to be the cause, but clearly this is not the case. Perhaps it is due to resource availability ?

So, what could cause SAP GUI to display favourites menu in compressed form when the workstation is under load, and when SNC auth is used ? Any ideas you may have on this are appreciated ...

The customer has installed patch 3 of SAP FrontEnd and the problem still occurs.

Thanks,

Tim

[Former Member]

Sounds to me as if SNC activation in combination with the terminal load is causing a WAIT UP TO threashhold to be exceeded for the SAPGUI progress indicator when sending the user's own favourites (the size of which can be controlled by the user and is therefore not subject to change management). Perhaps it is a performance hit with a lower priority than the SAP menu or role menu (which I still think is more than just a workaround for the problem...

I would still be curious to know whether you can identify any "reasoning" behind this "compression"?

For example, once a session is created with this compressed and resized favourites menu, can the user create a new session '/o' with the same "compression" or does it resolve more or a different part of the favourites menu? Or only favourites of a certain object type (or in certain order of object types)?

Cheers,

Julius

Edited by: Julius Bussche on Dec 30, 2007 12:00 PM

[tim_alsop]

Julius,

Thankyou. your idea of trying to create a new session is a good one. I have asked the customer to try this and let me know what happens.

Thanks,

Tim

[Former Member]

Hi Tim,

Another thought which had come to mind: if you have access to a lab environment, then play around with network latency between the Frontend and the Backend to constantly simulate a client which is not responding fast enough. Use activating / deactivating SNC, and, increasing / decreasing the size of the favourites as a "toggle" as you increase the latency.

If you can turn the behaviour on / off using such a toggle, then chances are good that it is a performance tolerance setting which is independent of SNC as well, one which you might even be able to influence (though I confess to liking the idea of role-less users complaining about not having a menu )

All the best for 2008!

Julius

[WolfgangJanzen]

I'm just wondering whether anyone else has made a similiar experience.

This seems to be a very specific problem that currently only one single customer is dealing with. Normally that indicates that there is "some weird system configuration" - otherwise other customers would face the same problem, too.

Frankly speaking, I doubt that SNC is causing the problem.

Maybe only indireclty (by causing additional network delay).

Cheers, Wolfgang

PS: Happy New Year

[tim_alsop]

Julius,

The customer just reported back to me that they tried creating a new session and the new session opens with the correct favourites menu, so the problem only seems to occur during the first logon ...

I agree with Wolfgang on the fact that this is likely not caused by SNC. I am working with the customer to try and confirm this, and see if we can get more diagnostics.

Happy New Year to you all,

Take care,

Tim

[Former Member]

Hello Tim and Wolfgang,

I was curious too as I found it interesting... so I tested a few combinations, but could not reproduce what Tim has described, at least not before my CPU reached 100% and the applications stopped responding (~2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 48 kbps connection, latency ~ 2 x width of the Pacific Ocean, but Backend 7.00!).

However I did notice some indications which might be a help (based on 7.00!):

Back in 4.?? there was a problem in that large menus could not be searched(!). Sorry, I don't have access to SAP now, but from memory the note # was 444043 (or very similar) and introduced a form routine for large menus - from a printscreen I still have the message number which led me to the note - 'I476(S#)'.

The system certainly distinguishes between MENU_TYPEs and the above note corrections could be found in several locations relating to the SAP menu 'S', the role menu 'A' etc, but I could only see that for favourites 'F' this is implemented for the menu search (when searching, not when loading).

@ Tim: Ask you customer to create a favourites menu which only has 1 node or max 2 (certainly not more than 4!) and ~ 20 executable objects in it (not more than 30!)? Can they under any conditions achieve the described problem with such a menu?

If not possible to reproduce, then the closest I could guess is a maximum limit of 4 nodes and max 30 objects for a 'F'avourite menu, before it is a minimum candidate for "performance problems" and consideration to be converted to a role ('A'ctivity group) menu instead.

Sorry that I can only help by speculating, because I could not reproduce what you have described.

Hopefully this problem will not happen to me in the New Year, and hope you will solve it for the rest of the year

Cheers,

Julius

Updated memory (not RAM) by: Julius Bussche on Jan 3, 2008 9:07 AM

[WolfgangJanzen]

> ... the new session opens with the correct favourites menu, so the problem only seems to occur during the first logon ...

That's interesting. But that then indicates that it cannot be a general problem (SNC related).

[tim_alsop]

Wolfgang,

I understand from the customer that they do not get the problem every time, and it sometimes takes a few attempts to reproduce the error. It is therefore possible that creating the new session worked when they tested it, but if they keep trying to logon and create a new session, it might fail to display the favourites correctly on one attempt ...

I am having difficultly understanding why network issues and/or authentication method would cause an application to display a menu differently. Surely this is caused by a bug in SAP GUI ? If so, how do we find out why this is occuring for this customer and not every other SAP customer using SAP GUI 7.10 SP2/3 ? The fact this customer is using our Windows SNC library with the latest SAP GUI version is a possible reason, but this does not make sense to me - it is very wierd.

I have asked customer to try with SAP GUI 6.40 since this is more widely used by our customers, and we know the problem used to occur with this version and then went away when fixes were applied to the SAP FrontEnd libraries.

Thanks,

Tim

[tim_alsop]

Julius,

Thankyou again for your help. I will ask customer to try creating a small menu to see if the menu size makes a difference.

I also thought it might be worth trying with SNC encryption turned off - incase the extra resource usage for encryption/decryption of network traffic is causing this somehow ...

Thanks,

Tim

[WolfgangJanzen]

> I understand from the customer that they do not get the problem every time,

> and it sometimes takes a few attempts to reproduce the error.

Oh, well - those are the hardest problems to resolve ...

[tim_alsop]

I have decided to mark this question as closed, and I have awarded points to those that helped me.

We have not solved the problem yet, since it is hard to reproduce. We are still working with the customer to run various tests, and attempt to pinpoint the cause. They have tried different menus, but this didn't help. We have also determined that changing the vendor of the SNC library used doesn't matter - it occurs with any SNC library. It also occurs when different SAP systems are used so is not specific to the SAP system version used.

If I get more info in future I will update this thread.

[WolfgangJanzen]

Thanks - please keep us informed. Most likely it's caused by something that simply nobody has ever thought of being relevant ... - reminds me of the needle in a haystack.

[Former Member]

Thanks Tim. I would additionally also be interested to know how the customer reacted to the option of eliminating the problem using menus for a role rather than solving it for favourites?

Cheers,

Julius

[tim_alsop]

Julius,

At the moment the customer is more interested to solve the problem rather than bypassing/eliminating it. However, I know they have been doing some tests related to menus, so they might have tested in the way you said. I just haven't had a chance in last few weeks to discuss this with them to find out exactly what tests they have / haven't done yet.

Thanks again,

Tim