Troubleshooting for the ALE Module

This section describes problems that you may encounter when starting up or running the ALE Module. It covers the following subjects:

Startup problems

The following subsections provide suggestions for common startup problems.

Connector cannot log on to or register with the SAP application

If the connector cannot log on to or register with the SAP application:

Connector is not polling events

If your connector is not polling events from the SAP application:

Connector appears to be polling but events are not being picked up

Event handling

The connector logs information about successfully processed IDocs in a JMS-MQ event message (in the queue specified in the SAPALE_Event_Queue configuration property) to the EventState.log file. This file is located in the directory specified in the AleEventDir configuration property.

Note:
Each event message can contain multiple IDocs, each of which represents a business object.

If the connector goes down before it processes all IDocs in the current event message, it uses the EventState.log file during recovery to ensure that it sends each IDoc only once to the integration broker.

Important:
The connector does not create the log file automatically the first time it processes an event. You must create this file for before you run the connector for the first time.

The format of the log file is:

TID: OS, 1S, 2F, 3U

where <TID> is the current transaction ID being processed, and each number represents the sequence number of all work units in the event message.

For example, if the connector has successfully processed three of the first four IDocs in the current event message, the second IDoc failed processing, and the connector has not yet finished processing the current event message the EventState.log file might show:

<TID> :: OS, 1F, 2S, 3S

If the connector went down before processing the entire event message, at startup the connector will use the information in the log file to resume processing the events in the message at the point where it had stopped processing. The connector reads the log to get the transaction ID of the event to be recovered, the latest work unit, and the status of each work unit. Then the connector begins sending to the integration broker the business objects that represent each IDoc in the event message with a sequence number greater than the last number in the log file. In the previous example, the connector will processing the fifth IDoc in the current event message.

The connector keeps the contents of the log file in memory to enhance performance. It accesses the file on disk only to update it with a new entry. The connector reads the log file only at recovery time.

For information on how the connector uses the EventState.log file in the recovery process, see Failure recovery.

Failure recovery

Note:
These recovery steps do not apply if a disk failure occurs or if a disk is full.

To recover from failures during event notification, the connector:

  1. The connector processes IDocs from the JMS-MQ message in the event queue (specified in the SAPALE_Event_Queue configuration property). When it successfully processes a IDoc, the connector logs an entry in the EventState.log file.
  2. After the connector processes all IDocs in an event message, it clears the EventState.log file and begins writing entries to it for the next event message.
  3. If the connector goes down before it processes all IDocs in an event message, it uses the information in EventState.log to determine where to begin processing during the recovery process. When it comes back up, the connector checks whether there are any entries in the log file.

Recovery from business object creation errors

If the connector has created only the header portion of the message in the WIP queue but not the data portion, this procedure will recover the data portion of the message.

  1. Examine the SAP connector log for error messages pertaining to the business object's name, message type, or verb.
  2. Make the appropriate corrections to the business object definition or the connector configuration.
    Note:
    Configuration changes may include changes to WebSphere MQ queues. For more information, see Prerequisites to running the ALE Module..
  3. Restart the connector.

Request processing

If a subscribing business object is not being processed by the ALE Module, then:

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