The infamous SAP DPMON tool

I often get a lot of incidents and questions from customers and colleagues about not being able to access the SAP system (ABAP) when all the given Dialog process are busy or with any other status different than Waiting.

Well, just to let you know, there is no real need to logon into the system to get a picture of what is going on with dialog process and workprocesses in general.

You can use the infamous DPMON (Dispatcher Monitor) tool from operating system level.
This tool can be found either at the instance exe´s directory or from the kernel repository sys/exe/run/ directory.

DPMON lets you manage workprocess as in the same manner like in SM50 transaction. You can:

- Have a quick look at the Dispatcher and workprocess table, with current status of each process.
- Increase/Decrease trace level.
- End a workprocess if you think that is really necessessary!

To launch DPMON:

- Logon to the operating system with your adm user.
- Execute dpmon -pf=/path/to/your/instance_profile, generally: /sapmnt/sys/profile/server_sid_no.pfl or in Windows \\server\sapmnt\sys\profile.
- The command options and actions are available through text based UI.

DPMON saved lots of customers and colleagues unwanted system downtime!!