Blog – Page 95 – Paper Street Enterprises

Cloning a WordPress Website

Hello again, the past few days I’ve been working pretty hard on getting things setup for the new website. Being the CTO means that I should probably be able to handle little things like a website. If you’re been following me, “and judging by the attendance, you haven’t”, you’ll know that I recently had this site redone. I worked with a guy, Ben Fitts, that I would highly recommend. Well, I spent a bunch of money to launch that site, and My partner Mike said he also liked it, so why not use it again for JaveLLin Solutions. In my head, it sounded like a simple task. I’ll just take my paper street website, copy it over to JaveLLin, and rebrand it. I’ll give you time to time to stop laughing.

Well, as any good newbie would do, I went to the web and started searching. It wasn’t long before I found a several pieces of software offering to do this. I looked at the price tag, and it was $100. I only needed to do this one time, so I kept digging. I finally found someone that did the smart thing. They found out how to do it, added some screen shots, and then sold it for $15. I bought it. The instructions were good, and pictures clear, and it was as easy as 8 simple steps… “mostly”.

My first challenge was using a poor hosting site. For those of you looking for a hosting site, take my advice and avoid Fatcow. For a long time, they were good enough for me. But as soon as I started to up my game, I quickly discovered that all of the stuff they offer is out of date. I can’t updated to latest wordpress, or database, the blog platform was aweful, and the help desk was substandard. Short story, I’m cancelling my account there. Hostgator has been great and i would highly recommend using them. Reasonably priced, and great service.

Anyway, after playing with my site on Fatcow and not figuring out what I did wrong (this took about 2.5 days), I finally decided to make a new domain on my existing hostgator account. Almost instantly, the cloned site worked. However, since Ben set me up with a login and protected area to download files, I had to completely reconfigure that. Not rocket science, but it was time consuming. However, I’m excited, because the new site is up and running and seems to be great. One of my next challenges will be adding all the information for Proximity (our newest product). Adding pages is easy, but coming up with graphics that looks good… well, that will be a learning exerpience again…

Anyway, that’s why you have me… I learn things the hard way, so you don’t have to…

Upgrading the SAP Kernel

You never know what I’m going to talk about next. Even I wonder if there is a method to my madness (I hope so 🙂 ). Anyway, today’s task is to update the SAP kernel on my ERP 6.0 EHP4 system. I can’t get the crazy thing to start, so one of the suggestions online was to upgrade to the latest kernel, so here I am.

Step one. Download the files. YOu need the database file, the database independent file, and of course SAPCAR.EXE. You can find all this on service.sap.com. Normally, I just do a search and look for Kernel and my version. In this case, I needed to find Kernel 7.01. From here, SAP will guide you down the path depending on your OS and your DB type. Look for the file with the biggest number or latest date.

Next up, save all these files to a location, and extract them. This is what SAPCAR is for. Since I’m on windows, I use the cmd.exe and navigate to where I saved the files. I then use the command sapcar -xvf *.SAR. The only catch is that once you start the extract, make sure and move SAPCAR.EXE to a different directory. It gets extracted out the files you are extracting and will dump when it encounters the same file. You can also extract to a different directory, which probably the better approach.

Next, save a copy of your current kernel, just in case. For me, the path is: c:\usr\sap\<SID>\SYS\exe\us\NTAMD64\. I’ll just grab all of these files and save them somewhere else. If things go horribly wrong, I’ll just wipe out the changes and paste these files back in.

So obviously, I copy the extracted files to the kernel location. Be sure to leave all of the existing files in the directory. Depending on the Kernel, not everything gets updated.

Now test. I usually restart my system, just to be safe and then fire up SAP. in general, it’s that’s easy… Hopefully this gets my EHP4 system working so I can take advantage of the new testing and debugging tools not available in kernel 7.00. Unfortunately, for me, my Kernel doesn’t seem to be the issue. So back to the drawing board. It might mean a new install 🙁

Thanks,

Mike

WMIGO – My latest application

A few days ago, I mentioned how I started my integration between Service Management and Warehouse Management. This started small by cloning the old school transactions MB1A, MB1B & MB1C. I quickly found why everyone said it was a bad idea. So I spent the last week designing my own solution. It’s kind of a cross between the new SAP Enjoy transaction MIGO & and the original MB1A, B and C.

Now the solution is nearly complete (in fact, I hope to be doing my documentation and youtube video of it by next week). In the meantime, I wanted to touch on what I learned while doing this. First, trying to replicate an old or even a new SAP transaction can be quite time consuming. While my functionality to create the Transfer Order from the material movement was quite simple, learning how SAP designed the transaction can be quite involved. On the plus side, I learned quite a bit about material movements. For those of you that care, the tables T156, T157 & T158 all help the material movements. The transaction OMJJ has pretty much everything you need to configure anything in the material movement world. I had to learn this because since there are hundreds of options for doing a material movement, in my limited experience I’ve probably only done about 15 or 20 of them total. So I had to learn what values are needed for each of these. In addition, there are always fields that appear or disappear depending on the movement type. Table MIGO_CUST_FIELDS became invaluable because it shows what fields should appear by movement type. It allowed me to keep my transaction very generic (only doing specific logic for a couple of movement types). I also found there are movement types that can do almost anything, yet I don’t think they are often used. So like any good application, I’m choosing to ignore those movements and add it to the documentation. If a customer requests it, I’ll add it later =)

I just need to add the serialization piece and I’m ready to have another application out there.

Thanks for reading

Mike

Learning a New Skill – ABAP Web Dynpro

Just in case I didn’t have enough on my plate, I’ve decided to expand my skill set. I want to start designing mobile applications for smartphones and tablets. So the logical first step is get myself up to speed with the latest and greatest in SAP web design. That’s ABAP web dynpro. I didn’t just have this idea, in fact I had it almost a year ago, but I got side tracked, distracted, and just generally forgot about it. Now with the advent of Javellin Solutions, I need to up my game. Because of that, I just finished (well at least mostly finished) the ABAP Web Dynpro book from SAP. Overall, it’s pretty good. I would recommend it. But I would also encourage you to have an end goal in mind. At least for me, whenever reading a book like this, I need to try to apply it to whatever I’m going to do with it. For me, it’s Broadsword & Rapier. I want to convert both of those Web Dynpro. Of course, the end result is to get me designing actual apps for the tablets. My first big product in that space will be the field service apps. I haven’t even started it (and I don’t have the first clue about applications design for smartphones or tablets) but I have a good plan. First, apply this new skill to my existing applications while I learn to use it effectively, and deliver an even better product to my customers. I’ll be posting more about this in the future… but for today, I just wanted to encourage you to have a plan and always learn a new skill. You never know when you might need it.

Thanks for reading

Backing Up Data – Learning the Hardway

Well, with any operation, making sure your data is properly backed is pretty important. Since I love to learn things the hard way, I originally gave no thought at all this. So in my last post I explained about some of the pain it took to install a simple SAP system. Well, now envision that I spent the next 6 months beginning my development of my great idea (it would be Rapier, eventually). One day, I was in between projects, so I was sitting in the living room, catching up on episodes of Lost, coding my BSP masterpiece. I can’t really remember exactly how it happened, but my portable HDD suddenly started making a clicking sound, my system locked up, and suddenly, all of my work was gone. The last 6 months of installing SAP, and design of my product gone. I didn’t have another HDD, I didn’t have backups. In my naive mind, I didn’t think a HDD would fail (keep in mind, I used to build computers for myself in college, so I should know better). So… I went back to square one (happily, I did take some notes on the installation, so instead of months, it took me 2 weeks.) I redesigned a better BSP app, and learned a lot along the way. That’s how i learned the first time.

Now… how did I remedy my mistakes? I implemented a couple of things. First, I got myself a great big HDD and kept copies of my SAP systems and various other virtual systems, so I could quickly rebuild if I needed to (I still have those systems to this day, just in case). The other thing I started to do was to save my SAP transports. For those of you unfamiliar, as long as your STMS configuration is set up (and this can be a pain), every time you release a transport SAP saves 2 files. The Data & Cofile can then be backed up somewhere else (I use dropbox so I can quickly get to them, and it keeps them in the cloud). Then at anypoint, I can upload those transports into a clean system, giving me periodic code and configuration backups. It doesn’t help if I have to recreate master data, but I have a different method to help me with that.

As a side note, I recently had another HDD fail. This one less costly, but still painful because I realized I wasn’t backup up often enough, and I wasn’t saving the right things. So what did I do? I got myself another HDD, and I now backup my progress weekly (I also do this for all my files and pictures etc too). In addition, I think I might also get Carbonite to give me everything at a remote location. I need to figure out how I can have all of my SAP systems on Carbonite. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know…

In the meantime, learn from me, not with me… back your stuff up

Mike

Installing SAP – What do you need?

Well, for the small business person, the task of installing SAP can be quite daunting. Take me for example, when I first tried to install SAP it took me a couple months. Here’s why:

1. I had to learn how to use virtual server
2. I didn’t have CD/DVD’s of the SAP software, so I had to download everything
3. I didn’t have an appropriate operating system.
4. I didn’t have the first clue about settings for the SAP installation
5. Woefully deficient hardware

So, those 4 minor points, made things go a little slower. Luckily, SAP has provided some Netweaver trial systems that I could use while I figuring this all out. Well, Step 1 I talked a lot about yesterday, so I won’t go into too much detail. Just remember, VirtualBox is far better than Virtual Server (in my humble opinion). Step 2… This was just time consuming. Downloading SAP 1 file at a time from service.sap.com was quite an ordeal. Then to make things worse, I would often encounter an error half way through my installation because one of my downloads was corrupt.
The next thing I quickly found is that SAP can’t run on the standard windows software. So I had to go get a license for Windows Server. Initially, I chose 2003 (32 bit) because it was affordable, and for running a 4.7 SR2 system, it worked. Not a huge deal, but it did require me to start my whole virtual system over again, since I originally installed it with Windows XP (I’m sure many of you are laughing at me right now wondering how the hell did this guy ever make it this far). Like I mentioned in earlier posts, I learn really wall the HARD way.
Next, my hardware is way underpowered. I was running off my laptop (I still am today, but I’ve since bought a much better laptop). So I only had 4GB of memory to run my laptop and my entire SAP system. Needless to say, an installation would run for 5 days, if it didn’t encounter an error forcing me to start over. It could be painful, including waking up in the middle of the night, just see if things had failed, so I could start the install again with slightly different settings.

Eventually, it did all happen and my 4.7 system has been happily running ever since… well, I did learn some valuable lessons about backing up… but I’ll save that for a another time.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

Mime Repository – Good and Bad

Well, yesterday I spent dealing Eclipse, today’s challenge is with the Mime Repository. It seems that no matter what I do, certain logo’s won’t show on the BSP. I’ve tried different folders, different sizes, and even reloaded it, still no luck.

It seems there may be a glitch with the way I uploaded the transports when I rebuilt the system a few weeks ago. It seems that in ERP 6.0, the package won’t allow me to create a new Mime folder, but if I go to the Mime repository, I can see a folder there. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to link it using my BSP application. After scouring the internet, and OSS with no luck, a new idea hit me. What if the name of the document is what is causing the issue? So I uploaded the logo with a new name, and it worked. So somehow, in my transport, the file was corrupted and has a bad link. Just one more lesson learned. Be very careful transporting Mime objects.

Now, back my testing. Thanks for reading.

Mike

Infrastructure – Setting up SAP on a budget

Well, for those of you that don’t know me that well, you’ll find I like to be as self sufficient as possible. That tends to mean a lot of work and a lot of learning (when I first installed, it took more a couple months… but I’ll save that for another time). Today, I’d like to explain a little of how I went about setting up SAP, and some trouble shooting for those of you in a similar situation (and maybe you have some advise for me).

First of all, I’ve set my system up using VirtualBox from Oracle. When I first started, I used VirtualServer from MS, but I quickly found it doesn’t work with Windows 7, and doesn’t play well for 64 bit operating systems. So then I discovered Oracle’s tool, and I”ve been very pleased with it. The functionality and usability seems much better. Of course, you decide for yourself. Now it may seem like a lot of work to set all of this up in a virtual environment, but let me tell you, it’s well worth it. Since I still do consulting as my “day” job, I often have to travel. Setting up a dedicated server and all of the infrastructure to go along with it can be expensive, and can be limiting. In order to access it, you must have internet. Since I’ve been doing this for roughly 6 years (I can’t believe it’s been that long), I often wanted to work in the airport or airplane. At that time, internet on a aircraft was very rare, even today, not all airplanes offer wi-fi. So with my virtual system, I was able to get myself a big HDD (portable of course) that could just come with me anywhere. Then I could just plug it, fire up the server, and continue developing. the other thing it got me was freedom. With virtualbox, I can create a save point anytime. And for testing this invaluable… Now I can create a system, and a whole bunch of configuration and master data. Save that snapshot… install my applications, and if it doesn’t work, I simply roll back and install the latest version like nothing ever happened. It also allows me to create a unique system for each customer if needed. So if I do custom development unique to one customer, I can have their own system and configuration saved in it’s own box. I can go on and on… but the short story is for someone just starting out, this environment has been awesome for me.

Next time, I’ll go into more details of what you’ll need…

Thanks for reading

Mike

Eclipse – Editing your SAP Themes

Well, today has been a big relearning experience for me. When I originally designed Rapier, I played around with Eclipse. With is a piece of software that has partnered with SAP that allows you to edit your SAP theme for a BSP or WebDynpro application. If you’re not familiar with a SAP theme, it’s basically all of the colors, fonts, and styles for your web page.
Well, the last time I used Eclipse, it was a almost 2 years ago. So today I had to go through and relearn how to install and use it. IN fact, I’m still playing with it as we speak. What I wanted to talk about today is the basic process for editing your SAP theme and testing it.
Step one is get it installed. You’ll need to download a few things to make this all work properly:
SAP Install Files
This link will give you the SAP specific files you need to edit themes.
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/downloads?rid=/library/uuid/b08a05ec-e24a-2d10-189e-f5c6bcbf39a5
This link gives you the how to of installation and how to get started. This guide is good, but most of the Eclipse is trial and error. As far as Rapier is concerned, this is the only time consuming part of the whole installation process. You have infinite colors and a LOT of areas that can be customized.

Finally, once you have something to play with, go back into SAP and execute the program:

BSP_UPLOAD_MIMEREPOS

Then just enter in the path of where you want to upload the theme,
/SAP/PUBLIC/BC/UR/Design2002/themes/
is the default area SAP keeps it’s themes . Select upload, and all the files will be pulled in.

Finally, point your application to the new theme and give it a try. If you are using Rapier, just go to /ZPSE/CONFIG transaction and enter in your new theme.

So, get ready to do a lot of trial and error, but before you know it, your website will look awesome.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

Cloning is bad… and I’m not talking about Sheep, SAP transaction cloning

Alright, well, I just learned something the hard way. For those of you that know me, you’ll know I’m good at that =). Anyway, a few days ago I talked about the new SM/WM integration product I was working on. I was all excited because I almost finished a replacement for the MB1A, B & C transactions to perform material movements and auto generate the transfer order. Well, I took a short cut. I copied the transaction MB1A, and did my updates to that. Well, I finished my development, got it all working in my 4.7 development system. So, as my usual process, I moved the code to my ERP 6.0 system. Well, I got instant syntax errors because things have changed a lot between those versions. Naively, I thought this old transaction will never change. SAP transaction cloning certainly bit me in the butt. It’s been around forever, so I can just copy it. WRONG!!! The code had a lot of enhancements (included enhancement points, changed forms, etc…). So… I’m back to the drawing board. I’m still going to generate the transaction, but now I need to build the entire front end.
Short story, there are no short cuts in solid developments. Anyway, I’ll keep you in the loop for my continued progress.
Thanks for Reading…

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