What is SAP Basis?
Resource management such as memory, buffers, etc
This presentation takes place via a graphical user interface (GUI). This is where users read required information and enter new data into the system.
Understanding the structure and functioning of the system is particularly important for IT administration. It is not for nothing that "SAP Basis Administrator" is a career field in its own right. Instead of data and application development, the focus here is on providing the software environment on which the company's tools are created. SAP Basis is therefore comparable to the server and platform infrastructure and its administration in companies - as distinct from application and web development.
Some useful tips about SAP basis can be found on www.sap-corner.de.
Error analysis
Regular maintenance tasks or the standard procedures must be described and defined to build checklists based on them and to control compliance with this standard. The SAPSolution-Manager can also support this as a tool of SAP e.g. through the Guided Procedures. In this context, it is also necessary to document the functionality of an underlying application and thereby determine what testing and monitoring activities are necessary. This is a reconciliation process between the SAP basis, other IT departments and, if necessary, the business areas concerned. The defined standard and the system's IST situation must be fully documented and regularly checked for compliance. This can be done through automated monitoring, validation using tools such as SAP-LVM (Landscape Virtualisation Management) or SAP Solution Manager, as well as manual checklists. Only the regular review of the standards guarantees their compliance. It can also support the regular use of SAP services such as Go-live Checks or Early Watch. Examples of how to standardise procedures are listed here: ・ Naming of system instances and logical hosts, or at least one central registry in a directory service, or LVM or SAP customer portal ・ Centrally starting and stopping systems, such as via the LVM ・ Categorising SAP instances by T-shirt size to define profile standards and cost them.
In this article on SAP Security Automation I would like to take a look at the future of automated processes in the SAP Security area. For many companies, the topic of security automation still offers a lot of potential in terms of time savings and process optimisation. Our daily work environment offers numerous tasks that could be handled excellently automatically. For this reason, in this article I present two of the possibilities that already exist in the broad area of security automation. Security Automation via SAP Security Check The first option of Security Automation, which I want to introduce here, is the automatic verification of the existing permissions. Have you ever wondered who has critical permissions in your SAP system? And have you ever tried to do this by hand? Depending on the level of expertise and experience of the privilege administrator, this is a time-consuming work. If an audit is also announced and the SAP system is to be checked for critical permissions and segregation of duties, then it is very difficult to meet all requirements and secure the eligibility landscape in this respect. For this reason, various vendors provide solutions to automate the verification of the permission system with regard to critical permissions and segregation of duties using tool support. This allows permission administrators to use their valuable time to correct the errors rather than just looking for them. For example, we use a tool that runs through the verification of over 250 rules. We then get an evaluation of which rules are violated and which points are correct. A simple example of such rules is the use of the SAP_ALL profile. Another would be to grant the jump permission in debugging (S_DEVELOP permission object with the ACTVT = 02 field). These are two relatively simple examples of Security Check tools' rulebook. In addition, queries are also made, which are located in the field of Segregation of Duties. Using this tool allowed us to move from manual validation of critical permissions to an automatic process.
The "Shortcut for SAP Systems" tool is ideal for doing many tasks in the SAP basis more easily and quickly.
This includes the documentation of key and mission critical processes and their verification for timeliness and validity.
The freeware Scribble Papers is a "note box" in which all kinds of data can be stored. It takes in typed texts as well as graphics and entire documents. The data is then organised in folders and pages.
This step, too, is of great interest to the SAP basis and is necessary to translate the previously agreed specifications into a concrete marketing concept of the SAP basis.