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Measures reported by AsAbapIdocStTest

IDocs are structured ASCII files (or a virtual equivalent). They are the file format used by SAP ABAP to exchange data with foreign systems. IDocs is the acronym for Interchange Document. This indicates a set of (electronic) information which builds a logical entity. An IDoc is e.g. all the data of a single customer in your customer master data file, or the IDoc is all the data of a single invoice.

An SAP ABAP application creates data and updates the database appropriately. An application can be a transaction, a stand-alone ABAP Report or any tool that can update a database within SAP ABAP. If the application thinks that data needs to be distributed to a foreign system, it triggers the IDoc outbound routine, usually by leaving a descriptive message record in the message table NAST. The application then either directly calls the IDoc engine or a collector job eventually picks up all due IDoc messages and determines what to do with them. If the engine believes that data is ready to be sent to a partner system, then it determines the function module which can collect and wrap the required IDoc data into an IDoc. In IDoc customising, you specify the name of the function module to use. This can either be one which is predefined by ABAP standard or a user-written one. When the IDoc is created it is stored in an R/3 table and from there it is sent to the foreign system.

IDoc inbound routines, on the other hand, are function modules with a standard interface, which will interpret the received IDoc data and prepare it for processing. The received IDoc data is processed record by record and interpreted according to the segment information provided with each record. The prepared data can then be processed by an application, a function module, or a self-written program.

Any slowness noticed in electronic data exchange between the SAP ABAP system and foreign systems therefore, can be attributed to bottlenecks or errors in the transmission/reception of IDocs. Administrators should hence closely monitor inbound and outbound IDoc traffic to proactively detect probable slowdowns in inter-system communications, and accurately tell where the slowdown occurred and why, so that the communication bottlenecks can be promptly cleared. This is where the AsAbapIdocStTest test helps.

This test monitors the inbound and outbound IDocs generated and reports the rate at which these IDocs were processed at various stages of transmission/reception, thus accurately pointing to processing slowdowns and where exactly the processing was bottlenecked. In addition, the test also reports the number of IDocs that were found to be erroneous every second and the exact stage of transmission/reception at which the rate of errors peaked! This way, the test leads administrators to errors in electronic data exchange that may have delayed communication significantly, and where such delays were frequent!

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
numNew	Indicates the number of Idcos of this type that were created during the last measurement period.	Idocs	A high value is desired for this measure.
newRate	Indicates the rate at which the Idocs of this type were generated during the last measurement period.	Idocs/sec	This measure gives an overview of outbound/inbound data transfer rate using the Idocs.
extAppErrRate	Indicates the rate of Idocs of this type with external errors or application errors.	Idocs/sec
newExtAppErr	Indicates the number of Idocs of this type with external system errors or application errors during the last measurement period.	Number	Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero. The detailed diagnosis of this measure if enabled, lists the details of these Idocs such as the Idoc number, type, error message, recipient and sender details, creation and modified timestamps and number of data records.