IBM InfoSphere Information Server Pack for SAP Applications 8.1: References, Troubleshooting and Limitations

Content

References

• Online documentation
• SAP product compatibility
• Migrating jobs
• Memory requirements
• Pack for SAP Applications in the Parallel environment
• List of environment variables supported
• Delta Extract job design step-by-step guide (DevWorks)
• Mapping between SAP data types and InfoSphere DataStage data types
• Configuring parallel (MPP) BAPI jobs on Linux or UNIX
• ABAP Extract stage: running multiple jobs in parallel
• ABAP Extract stage and Unicode FAQ

General Troubleshooting

• An SAP Connection cannot be created using InfoSphere DataStage Administrator for SAP
• SAP Pack stages are missing in the DataStage Designer stage types view
• Troubleshooting ABAP extraction jobs that use Remote Function Call (RFC) data transfer method
• The ABAP Extract stage fails to extract multi-byte data (e.g. Chinese characters) correctly
• BAPI stage: log file location setting is incorrect
• BAPI stage editor: some BAPIs do not appear in BAPI explorer
• ABAP Extract job aborts with a "service unknown" error

Upgrade Troubleshooting

• See the IMPORTANT NOTES section in the Installation Document.
• Jobs with IDoc stages designed with SAP Pack 6.5 or earlier do not run with SAP Pack 7.0 or later
• The IDoc stages from Pack for SAP R/3 6.5 show up in the Data Stage Designer but don't work anymore after upgrading
• ABAP stages in Server jobs migrated from SAP Pack 6.5 have the "Suppress ABAP program validation at runtime" option checked by default
• Issue during the migration of SAP connections to a new Information Server installation

Limitations

• The DS job parameters only support ASCII characters (222818)
• Some stage configuration parameters only support ASCII characters - technote 1568493
• The ABAP stage SQL builder does not support job parameters in the SQL IN clause
• Multi-instance jobs with the multiple instances running at the same time are only supported for ABAP stage with the RFC data transfer method
  For the other stages, the limitation is due to temporary runtime artifacts that don't account for job Invocation ID (241617)
• When installing the Pack using the patch installer (ispkg) the file Version.xml is not updated with the Pack version (261920)
• Installing an Information Server Fixpack after installing the Pack for SAP Applications overrides the Pack version recorded in Version.xml (e.g. 8.0.0.1 becomes 11.3.1.2) (232657)
• When using DS Designer to design jobs using the Pack stages, unless instructed by IBM Support otherwise, make sure RFC tracing is disabled (environment variable RFC_TRACE is set to 0 or not defined). There were reports of unexpected errors with the trace on (274673)
• The desktop shortcut for the Datastage Administrator for SAP does not work when used with the Datastage Multi-Cient Manager. Use instead the Start Menu shortcut for the intended IS version - for example Start Menu / IBM InfoSphere Information Server 11.5 / DataStage Administrator for SAP.  (261866)
• Using jobs in Pack version lower than the original creation version is not supported. This includes Fixpack releases.
  For example, creating a job in Pack version 8.1 and then opening it in Pack version 8.0 is not supported.  (277831)
• Using shared network paths in Windows (for example for storing the DSSAPConnections folder where the connections are saved) is only supported if Windows user authentication is not needed. This is a known Windows limitation, as specifying user/password in UNC paths is not supported. The workaround is to map the shared network path to a Windows drive letter using OS tools as this allows saving the user / password; use this drive letter in your Datastage paths. (113913)
• IDoc Load stage editor: column definitions are not saved unless the Columns tab is opened - technote 1569595
• The ABAP stage SQL builder does not support job parameters in the SQL IN clause.
• OData Load stage does not support insert and update operations of services having multiple Entities.
• For OData connector, the service  yserviceticket is not supported owing to the varying response from this service