For those of you who have chosen to advance your SAP skills by having your own personal SAP server on your home PC or laptop, here are a couple of tips that might make the ride a little smoother for you...

I am going to focus on Netweaver 7.01 ABAP Trial installed on Windows Vista Ultimate - My PC has a dual core 3Ghz processor with 2Gb RAM.

Virtual Memory

The first thing I did was increase my virtual memory allocation to between 3 and 4Gb - This will make sure that if you happen to run out of physical memory, the OS will overflow to the page file and use your hard drive as a virtual source for memory. If this happens, it will drastically reduce the performance of your system, but at least it doesn't have to stop working.

1. Click the Wind0ws or "Start" button
2. Right click on "Computer"
3. Click on Properties
4. Click on "Advanced System Settings" on the left
5. Click on the "Advanced" tab
6. Under the "Performance" section, click the "Settings..." button
7. Click the "Advanced" tab
8. Under the "Virtual Memory" section click the "Change..." button
9. Make sure to deselect "Aromatically manage paging file size for all drives"
10. Select the volume that SAP is or will be installed on
11. Select the "Custom Size" option
12. Set the "Initial Size" as 3000Mb or bigger
13. Set the "Maximum Size" to at least 4000Mb
14. Save your changes and restart your machine for the changes to take affect.

Profile Parameters

Profile parameters are technical settings to do with how the SAP system runs. By default you cannot change these profile parameters from within SAP - You actually have to use a text editor to edit the profile parameter files directly. This can get a bit tedious, especially when you are playing around with the parameter values.

1. Go to transaction RZ10
2. Click on Utilities->Import Profiles->Of Active Users
3. You will see a lot of red - Don't worry about this. Even though this is a Netweaver Trial, the parameter checks are for large scale enterprise servers, so we can just ignore most of these errors.
4. Click back button.
5. Click the save button
6. If asked to activate the profile, say yes.

Increase Number of Dialog & Background Processes

By default, the trial is set up to allow only 2 dialog work processes, and 1 background process. If you have more than one person logging into the system at once, you may want to increase these values. Just remember that with each new work process, comes increased resource requirements.

Please never change the number of dialog processes to only 1 - If you do this, and then try to use something like F4 field input help, the system will hang because it requires at least 2 dialog processes.

It is also useful to increase the background processed to about 2 or 3, so that when you are running batch jobs you don't constantly have to wait for other jobs to complete first.

1. Go to transaction RZ10
2. Select your instance profile - Eg NSP_DVEBMGS00_<servername>
3. Select "Extended Maintenance"
4. Click the change button
5. Change the value of rdisp/wp_no_dia to set the desired number of dialog processes. (Make this 4/5)
6. Change the value of rdisp/wp_no_btc to set the desired number of background processes. (Make this 2/3)
7. Click the back button
8. Say yes when asked to save changes
9. I know this seems repetitive, but now you need to click the save button
10. Say no when it tells you that incorrect parameter values were detected
11. Say yes when it asks to activate the profile
12. For these changes to take affect, you will need to restart the application server

Compile Programs

Every program in SAP needs to be compiled before it can be run for the first time - After first installing Netweaver, it can become quite a headache watching every transaction you go into compile first. As pointed out by Mike, it would be a great idea to have these programs all compiled for you in a batch job which is run while you are sleeping one night... Remember that when executing a mass compile action, you ill need sufficient disk space for the operation - Do not do this if you are already short on disk space!

1. Go to transaction SGEN
2. Select the option to "Generate All Objects of Selected Software Components"
3. Select the continue button
4. Now select the software components that you want to generate - If you have enough disk space, I would suggest selecting them all
5. Click the continue button
6. Now there is the option for parallel processing, but you will only have one application server, so just click Continue
7. After a while you will be shown options to schedule a background job to do all the work - Either start immediately, or schedule for a convenient time
8. In my system, there were 62340 objects that needed to be generated. Note that the background job seems to use multiple dialog processes to carry out the work - Because of this, it would be a good idea to increase the number of dialog work processes before starting this.

If anything goes wrong, you have the option to regenerate the previous loads in transaction SGEN. Remember that this will take some time, so let it run overnight while you don't need the machine... [Edit - My system is set up with 2 background processes and 4 dialog processes. I ran SGEN for all software components and it took a total of 2 days 2 hours and 40 minutes to complete, and used about 5.2Gb of hard disk space]

Create a New Client

I like to create my own new client for development - some people may want to have multiple clients. For example, you may want client 100 for development and client 200 for customizing.

When you create a new client is SAP, there are obviously no user accounts set up in that client. The only way to log into the client for the first time is to use the SAP* username. By default in version 7.01 of the Netweaver Trial, this option is disabled, so this will not work. You have to edit the profile parameters to enable this - Without making this change you will not be able to create a new client.

You need to first create a new client, then do a client copy so that the client becomes usable. Finally you will either copy user accounts into the client, or create new user accounts.

SAP* Login

1. Go to transaction RZ10
2. Select the instance profile, named something like NSP_DVEBMGS00_<servername>
3. Select the "Extended Maintenance" option
4. Click on the "Change" button
5. Click on the "New Parameter" button, or press F5
6. Parameter name is "login/no_automatic_user_sapstar" (without the quotation marks)
7. Parameter value is "0" (zero)
8. Click the back button - Say yes to save.
9. Click back button again - Click yes to save.
10. Click the save button - Say no when it tells you there are errors.
11. Click yes to activate when it prompts you.
12. Restart the server using MMC.

Now you can log into ANY client with the username SAP*, and password PASS (uppercase). Make sure to set this profile parameter value to 1 when this is no longer needed! Otherwise anyone can have SAP_ALL access if they try this login!!

Logical System

Make sure that you have created a logical system for each client in transaction BD54 - You will need this before you create a new client.

1. Go to transaction BD54
2. Information popup appears telling you that this is a cross client table. Click the tick.
3. Add a new entry for each client that you will use. Create one for client 001, and one for the new client you want to create.
4. I suggest that you name the logical system in the format of <System ID><SystemNumber><Client>, so for the preview installation, this would be NSP00001for client 001, and NSP00100 for client 100 etc.
5. Give the logical system a description - Like "Development Client", or "Test Client" or "Configuration Client"

Create Client

Now we need to create a new client. You can log in as BCUSER or DDIC on client 001.

1. Go to transaction SCC4
2. Click the 'Change" icon
3. Information popup appears telling you that this is a cross client table. Click the tick.
4. Click the New Entries button
5. Enter a client number and description
6. Enter the city
7. Select the logical system
8. Choose your currency
9. Select the client role - This would only really need to be "test" or "Customizing"
10. Make sure to choose "Automatic Recording of Changes" if you want to use the transport system
11. Select "Changes to repository and cross client Customizing Allowed"
12. Select "Protection level 0:No restriction"
13. Save your changes.

Client Copy

Now that you have created a new client, we need to do a client copy from client 000 - This will copy all basic data that is required to use the client.

1. Log into the new client with username SAP* and password PASS
2. Go to transaction SCCL
3. You will notice that the target client is set to the client that you are logged into - You can't change this.
4. It is recommended by SAP to use the SAP_CUST profile. You should not use other profiles like SAP_ALL, since there is a lot of default config in client 000 which is only accessed if it does not already exist in the client that you are in. What this means, is that if you have not set up configuration for something important int the client that you are in, SAP will fetch default values from client 000. You can then override the default values by simply maintaining in the said client. If you copy all the default stuff to your new client, you will prevent yourself from benefiting from any change in default config in the future which is introduced by an upgrade or support pack.
5. Select source client 000
6. You may want to run a test first to see that it will work - This should only take a few minutes.
7. Once ready, run without test mode selected, and make sure to "Schedule as Background Job"
8. Select the "immediately" option and then select Schedule Job
9. You can then view the status and result logs of the client copy by going into transaction SCC3.
10. Once the copy is complete, you may want to copy user profiles from client 001 by starting a new client copy, but with profile SAP_USER, source client 001.

Disable FQDN Check

(This was taken from entmike.com)

This disables the system from caring what domain name your web applications were accessed from.  In other words, since the trial version installs on localhost, trying to share a link to a web app to your friend using your internet IP address does not necessarily fly.  If you have your own domain name mapped to your IP address, then maybe this is not necessary, but let’s just remove the check altogether.  (Do not do this in an actual workplace environment!)

1. Go to transaction SE24 and enter CX_FQDN for Object type and click Display.
2. Double-click on the CHECK method under the Methods tab.
3. Click Method -> Enhance.
4. Click Edit -> Enhancement Operations -> Show Implicit Enhancement Options
5. Position your cursor on line 2 which should have a long line of ” marks.
6. Click Edit -> Enhancement Operations -> Create Enhancement
7. Click the Code button in the ‘Choose Enhancement Mode’ dialog box.
8. You will be prompted to ‘Select or Create Enhancement Implementation’.  Click the Create Implementation button at the bottom.
9. Enter Z_CHANGE_CX_FQDN as the name of the Enhancement Implementation.  (You can name it whatever you want, but it has to start with the letter ‘Z’).
10. Give a meaningful name for this enhancement (e.g. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’, etc)
11. For the ‘Composite Enhancement Implementation’, enter Z_CEI (or anything else you want that starts with a ‘Z’).  Then click the Checkmark.
12. You will be prompted to ‘Create Object Directory Entry’.  Just click ‘Local Object’.
13. Highlight your new Enhancement Implementation you just made in the dialog window and click the checkmark.
14. You will notice in your editor window a section similar to below:

    METHOD check.
    """"""""""""""$"$SE:(1) Class CX_FQDN, Method CHECK, Start       A
    *$*$-Start:   9999-------------------$*$*
    
    ENHANCEMENT 1 ZMIKE_ENHANCE.    "inactive version
    *
    ENDENHANCEMENT.
    *$*$-End:   9999-------------------$*$*
    ...

15. We will be adding one line of code (line 5).  Delete the * and type the word EXIT.  (Include the period).
16. Click the activate button.  (7th button on the toolbar, looks like a flashlight/matchstick).
17. Click the checkmark in the dialog pop-up you get.

Series

Part 1 gives general tips for running SAP Netweaver Trial

Part 2 tells you how to access your Netweaver trial at home from anywhere

Part 3 talks about how to enable the transport system in Netweaver 7.01