SAP Work Process

SM51 (Application Servers )

Application servers used for load balancing, hence, the need for their availability. The application server represents the runtime environment the SAP system. Use transaction SM51 to display the status of the instances of your SAP system.

SM50 (Process Overview)


This transaction code will be useful to view the processes that are running currently in an sap insance. In this view you can check whether there are free workprocesses to execute the processes. If all the workprocesses are in running state and no work process is idle it means that wait times will increase for the processes that are waiting in the dispatcher queue leading to performance degradation. If you find that there are no free workprocceses for maximum times that you may consider, increasing the number of workprocesses


A work processes is used to execute a particular type of job in an sap system.

There are different types of workprocesses as mentioned below :

DIA   (Dialog workprocess) : Used for execution of dialog steps triggered by active users. For every dispatcher atleast 2 dialog workprocesses to be configured

UPD  (Update workprocess) : Used for execution of update tasks. Atleast one update workprocess to be configured per SAP system. Also, more than one UPD can be configured for a dispatcher

BTC  (Background workprocess): Used for executing background jobs. Atleast 2 background workprocesses to be configured for an SAP system

SPO   (Spool workprocess) : Used for passing sequential data to printers. Atleast one spool workprocess to be configured for an sap system.

UP2   (Update2 workprocess) : This is similar to UPD workprocess. There is small difference in functionality based on criticality of the update.

ENQ  (Enqueue workprocess) : This is required to administer locktable in the shared memory. Locktable contains database locks for ABAP stack of an sap system. Only one enqueue process to be configured for an SAP system.


To increase/decrease the number of workprocesses, value to be changed accordingly for the following parameters as per workprocess in RZ10 Transaction.

rdisp/wp_no_dia  (for dialog workprocess)
rdisp/wp_no_btc  ( for background workprocess)
rdisp/wp_no_spo  (for spool workprocess)
rdisp/wp_no_enq  (for enqueue workprocess)
rdisp/wp_no_vb    (for update workprocess)
rdisp/wp_no_vb2  (for update2 workprocess)

In RZ10 transaction, select the profile of the instance, for which workprocess number to be changed and edit the profile through extended maintenance and save the changes done and activate the profile.

Please note that as this parameter is not dynamic one, restart of the application server is required for the changes to become effective.