IDoc Listener subsystem

The listener subsystem of the IDoc Extract Connector stage allows SAP sources to send IDocs to InfoSphere® DataStage®. It includes the listener manager and one or more IDoc listeners.

IDoc Listener manager

For instructions on setting up a logical system in SAP to work with the Listener, see http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21449730.

The IDoc listener manager runs as a daemon (dsidocd) on UNIX platforms and as a DataStage IDoc manager service on Microsoft Windows. For each configured SAP connection, the listener manager starts one or more IDoc listeners in separate processes. The listener manager ensures that all listeners remain active and connected to the respective SAP system. If the connection parameters change when a listener is running, the listener manager restarts the listener to update settings.

IDoc Listener

The IDoc listener application listens for IDocs sent from the SAP systems. Each IDoc listener is associated with an SAP connection by using the configured Program ID.

The IDoc listeners save the IDocs received from the SAP system on file system in the persistent staging area. You can also configure to send reception confirmations to the SAP system. When the IDoc listener receives a configured number of IDocs, the IDoc listener triggers the specified IDoc Extract job on the DataStage server.

Each IDoc listener maintains a log file at the following location: Information Server/Server/DSSAPConnections/SAP_Connection_Name/IDocListener.log

You can either browse the directory to view the IDocListener.log file or use the IDoc Log functionality of IBM® InfoSphere Information Server Pack for SAP Applications.

How to control IDocListener.log file size

To manually clean up the IDocListener.log file for a given configured SAP connection, you can use the InfoSphere DataStage Administrator for SAP. Select the required SAP connection and then click IDoc Log. Click Clear Log to clear the contents of the IDocListener.log file.

Alternatively, starting from v8.0.0.3, an automatic way to clear the IDocListener.log file is provided. You can define the maximum limit for the size (in megabytes) of the IDocListener.log file by using the engine tier environment variable DS_IDOCSVR_LOG_BUFFER_SIZE. The IDocListener.log file contents will be truncated automatically once the user provided size for the IDocListener.log file is reached. However, the last 10% of the log content will be preserved for continuity.

Temporary file directories

Every IDoc type on the configured SAP connection has a separate directory to temporarily store the IDoc files. You can configure the temporary directories either when you select the IDoc types in the IDoc Extract Connector stage editor or by using the Administrator for SAP utility.

You can configure different levels of access permissions for the temporary file directories.
  • User who runs the listener process must have write permissions to access all the IDoc type directories.
  • User who runs the InfoSphere DataStage job must have both read and write permissions to access the directory configured for the respective IDoc type.

To reclaim disk space, IBM InfoSphere Information Server Pack for SAP Applications provides functionality to clean up or archive IDocs that are older than a certain age. You can use the InfoSphere DataStage Administrator for SAP to either run the tool or to modify the default scheduling of the clean-up tool.