buffer and sql trace increasing space of tracefile??

[Former Member]

hello all,

under ST05 you can switch on buffer and sql trace.

The tracefile in my system has nearly 16MB space only, which means that in large systems with many users, the trace file gets filled in a few minutes or seconds. This results from the activity of hundreds of users.

For sure you can also define a special user group or exlude tables from the trace, which makes it possible to trace some more seconds. For me, this is not enough.

Is it right, that the SAP must be restarted if I would like to increase the size of a tracefile or rather adjust the corresponding parameter?

Is there any other chance to trace as many queries and changes as possible on another way?

do you have any ideas?

thanks in advance,

holger

[Former Member]

Hi Holger,

To increase the tracefile size parameter rstr/max_diskspace you will have to stop and restart your SAP instance. Check OSS 25099.

As an alternative see this

"If you need to create a large trace file for a customer and if immediate

evaluation is not possible or does not make sense, you can use operating

system tools to save the trace file for subsequent analysis."

in OSS 671714.

Cheers.

Sanjay

[Former Member]

thanks!

Under ST01 you are able to create more Trace files.

But i guess that it is not possible to switch automaticaly to a second and third tracefile (each 16Mb). By doing this you could evade the fact that a trace file has only 16mb and is filled up very fast. Thus you use more trace files...

As I read in the OSS note and as I think, it is not possible?!?

Another possibility is to check how the trace file is growing and listing it immediately before it is overwritten... Then saving it as spreadsheet in order to analyse and work on it with excel for instance...

the problem is, that I can not adjust the size of the tracefile because the trace is done in a productive system...

At least the most appropriate way to get a big "window" with executed queries and write-operations (on buffered tables) over a long time is to reduce the trace on a special user group, excluding tables with a lot read accesses (that might be uninteresting for analysis) and excluding process id's or programs as well...

Do you agree in that point? Do you have any further suggestions?

Thanks very much in advance,

holger

[Former Member]

Hi Holger,

Yes I agree. In a production system you will not be able to increase tracefile size unless you can find a window to stop and start the SAP system.

Even if you copy the trace file ( by a script at OS level ) to another file at regular interval and then refresh the existing trace file , the problem is how would you analyze these individual files as ST05 will only b able to analyze TRACE00 file. So even if you have backup of old files you will have to manually copy them to TRACE00.

So the best option is to restrict the filter intutively by selecting the most culprit tables / transactions.

Cheers