Background: In a business environment which utilizes the Enterprise Portal (EP) as a central platform as we know the number of users can vary from a few hundred to a few thousand depending on the business setup. In true essence the SAP NetWeaver Portal is one of the cornerstones in the entire SAP NetWeaver architecture. Through web browser interfaces the EP is the conduit channel through which users begin going about their daily tasks and the portal itself provides such users with a central point of access for all work related procedures and processes.
EP Environment: With the EP offering users a single point of access to information, documents, enterprise applications, processes and services both inside and outside of an organization its understandably easy for a simple environment to become complex quite quickly in terms of a high level perspective. In short the Portal provides access to business processes and information, social collaboration and content management across various consumption channels. Also with the ever-growing number of mobile phone business users the Portal needs to be maintained in an optimal an efficient manner.
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Why Monitor?
"Numbers have an important story to tell. They rely on you to give them a voice.” – Stephen Few
- View the system landscape from a high level.
- Identify areas of concern, usage statistics, security areas, etc.
- Pinpoint errors, low performance areas or bottlenecks.
- Planning for the future, are changes needed?
- Match requirements with setup, are you operating optimally?
- Capacity review
- Identify access trends
The Means of Monitoring
Various components, applications and services are shipped with the portal. There are various monitoring and log applications available for monitoring these objects. These applications check and monitor the portal in the background. Applications such as performance monitoring and activity tracing provide information about the status and help locate critical system events. You can use the information delivered by the monitoring, logging, and tracing applications to analyze the system and take appropriate action where necessary. The portal is installed as an application on the AS Java. Therefore, to understand the monitoring methodology and tool availability, see the section AS Java.
Monitoring Tools
The following list provides information on monitoring and logging functions and tools that you can use.
- Generic Request & Message Generator (GRMG)
- Performance Monitoring
- Parameter Reporting
- Portal Activity Report
- User Overview
Logging & Tracing
- Activity Tracing: You can sequentially record the activities of individual portal users for a defined time span and then analyze the performance and errors for these activities. Activity tracing is activated and deactivated in the Visual Administrator for a given user or for all users.
- Logging: The portal is logged using the standard central logging system of the AS Java, consisting of the Log Manager and the Log Configuration Service