
<p>Well, pretty easy. Google it, search for SAP notes, dive into already dead SAP SCN/SDN forum, take a gallon of coffee, sprinkle it with a debugger, learn ABAP and turn off social networks. Then it would take you only 5 minutes to read the system dump and fix the issue. Sounds easy, huh? Sometimes it&#8217;s quicker to read the dump then to open a ticket with a developer and wait until it&#8217;s resolved.</p>
<p>In real life, we have we could have two situations: recent dumps and old ones. The difference is in timing. If we ran into something and a short dump occurred, we can dive into a debugger right away and see the issue. If it&#8217;s old, it could be taught to understand what was the real cause of it. Usually, a dump occurs when user inputs something not expected by the system, like his name instead of a salary amount. In the first scenario just click on the debugger icon and the system opens a new window, where we can do some investigation. Otherwise open transaction ST22 and find your short dump which is usually under your name, but not necessarily. </p>
<p>Here is the dump from my SAP system from HR module.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image"><img class="wp-image-3462" src="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_01.png" sizes="(max-width: 934px) 100vw, 934px" srcset="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_01.png 934w, https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_01-300x280.png 300w, https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_01-768x716.png 768w" alt="" data-attachment-id="3462" data-permalink="https://saphr.ru/2018/09/10/kak-chitat-sistemnye-dampy-v-sap/st22_01/" data-orig-file="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_01.png" data-orig-size="934,871" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{";aperture";:";0";,";credit";:";";,";camera";:";";,";caption";:";";,";created_timestamp";:";0";,";copyright";:";";,";focal_length";:";0";,";iso";:";0";,";shutter_speed";:";0";,";title";:";";,";orientation";:";0";}" data-image-title="st22_01" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_01-300x280.png" data-large-file="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_01.png" /></figure>
<p>Many strange letters here, but here is the trick. The system dump could happen in the customer program (read your developer did a bad job) or SAP namespace. The easy way to distinguish is to look into the object names like if they start with Y or Z. these could be field names, class names, program names, routines, etc. If it falls into the customer namespace, then it&#8217;s much easier to fix cause we have a developer on board and can fix this. Otherwise, we need to search for SAP notes or support packages or even file a ticket with SAP Global Support and let them investigate our system. </p>
<p>If you&#8217;re a consultant, not a developer, stay with me and I&#8217;ll show how to read system dumps. Developers won&#8217;t find anything new here.</p>
<p>The first and most obvious is to read what&#8217;s written on the first page of the system short dump (who called it short when it&#8217;s a huge long read?). IN 90% the issue is right here and self-explanatory, like a value, doesn&#8217;t fit the field, wrong field or there is no active version of a program. Don&#8217;t close the window, read it! It could be a memory shortage and all you need is to restart the transaction (let&#8217;s say you ran a huge report). That&#8217;s easy! Or there is a broken network connection to other servers which will be back shortly. </p>
<p>The next case is when it happened to our in-house development. We need to understand what code caused the dump. To figure this out let&#8217;s scroll down a little to see the exact ABAP statement and row line in &#8216;Information on where terminated&#8217; and &#8216;Source Code Extract&#8217; sections. Have a look.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image"><img class="wp-image-3463" src="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_02.png" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 100vw, 709px" srcset="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_02.png 709w, https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_02-300x191.png 300w" alt="" data-attachment-id="3463" data-permalink="https://saphr.ru/2018/09/10/kak-chitat-sistemnye-dampy-v-sap/st22_02/" data-orig-file="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_02.png" data-orig-size="709,452" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{";aperture";:";0";,";credit";:";";,";camera";:";";,";caption";:";";,";created_timestamp";:";0";,";copyright";:";";,";focal_length";:";0";,";iso";:";0";,";shutter_speed";:";0";,";title";:";";,";orientation";:";0";}" data-image-title="st22_02" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_02-300x191.png" data-large-file="https://saphr.ru/wp-content/uploads/st22_02.png" /></figure>
<p>For example, here the system shows something broken on line 7. In plain English it says some value in P_NAME variable is missed, so the system doesn&#8217;t know how to proceed. If we have no clue why is that, let&#8217;s open the code, throw a breakpoint at the beginning of this routine and rerun the transaction. The system will stop there and step-by-step we&#8217;ll go over the code watching where this variable is filled. Why is it empty? Maybe the system reads some customing tables with some key and there is no value inside? A good point to open that table in SM30 and review configuration.</p>
<p>If you scroll down to the &#8216;Chosen Variables&#8217; section, there are variable values shown at the moment. Maybe something is, issued or has a wrong value there and it&#8217;s telling us the cause? A developer was expecting a user to input date on 10/10/2020 format, not 101020, let&#8217;s say. </p>
<p>In &#8216;Active Calls/Events&#8217; section we see the stack &#8211; what routines, classes had been called before we reached the outage point. If it&#8217;s a background program where the dump occurred, we can see the root cause. </p>
<p>Rarely we can see system dumps caused by kernel or system packages. If we installed something new in the system and it&#8217;s not compatible with the current configuration. Therefore we go straight to SAP Notes and search for it. It&#8217;s a high chance the issue was already resolved and all you need is to install a new SAP note with SNOTE transaction. This is a good reason why it&#8217;s not recommended to install the most recent patches, but the most recent minus one &#8211; somebody has already met that issue before you. </p>
<p>If it&#8217;s completely unusual and you&#8217;ve tried everything and it didn&#8217;t work, try to look into &#8216;How to correct the error&#8217; section. They either say how to fix the issue or provide you with a set of keywords you should use to google or search in SAP Support Portal. It really helps.</p>
<p>The last resort. If nothing works, call the developer. They know how to dive very deeply and find the very root cause. Or open a ticket with SAP global Support. It&#8217;s free of charge. </p>