"Reference lost: Page X-SAP-UI2-ADCAT..." issue after Fiori Frontend patch

This issue has been existing since the patch. We've done enough research all over the internet and SAP's notes. By now we've been able to particially resolve it, but not all

According to the following SAP notes, the missing tiles or catalogs can be pulled from some other Fiori systems

2269272 - "Reference Lost" Error for FLP Tiles after applying new UI component version

2275892 - "Reference Lost" Error for FLP Tiles after applying Support Package

There are a lot of prerequisites to run the tcode /UI2/APPDESC_GET, such as:

• create RFC type 3, type H (http / https), we created the RFC for S4PRC_RFC/S4PRC_HTTP/S4PRC_HTTPS

• maintain table/view /UI2/V_ALIASMAP and /UI2/V_SYSALIAS so that all the other catalogs (FI, PS, PLM, LO..etc) can re-use the settings of S4PRC

• apply proper version of the note corrections

Note: for HTTPS connection, we'll need to download the certs from backend S4 and load to NPL via strustsso2

So we download these notes and appied them manually via SNOTE, and we tried to tweek back and forth this note, and the results are different. Obvious seems the program was going to retrieve the SAP_TC_xxx catalogs

Before implement note

After implement note

Seems the program was going to get these SAP_TC_xxx from backend, however, it did not actually get any (shows 0 catalogs and 0 apps)

From the SAP help below

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw75/helpdata/en/52/2749ec852a4779845ee028e5b950a1/content.htm

It explains how these works:

If a back-end catalog did not change since the last replication, it will not be replicated.

So my understanding is, the backend S4 actually did not really act as a catalog provider. Looks to me is really like: the frontend Fiori server NPL, when it's catalog gets damaged, it'll retrieve a 'backup' catalog from somewhere else, such as a DEV/QA systems of Fiori app servers.

By the way, look at the view that contain the alias

Next step, we go to the IMG spro activities

For these standard catalogs, when we tried to delete them, they'll 'recover' themself automatically. Which actually fixed part of the 'reference lost' issues

After they 'recreated' by themself, now we can see these missing tiles back to normal!

However, not all the catalogs we can do so, some of them still showing missing. such as the SAP_PRC_BC_PURCHASER_PUC

After that it's still showing missing reference

Pay attention to SAP_TC_PRC_BE_APPS, which shows up as a deleted catalog when we ran the tcode /UI2/APPDESC_GET

The tcode is supposed to extract this catalog from the 'backend', but in the backend we could not retrieve it?

Just to prove it, we go to the backend S4 URL http://webgui.efglobe.com:8888/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/arsrvc_upb_admn/main.html to see if the SAP_PRC_BC_PURCHASER_PUC working properly. Please note that in theory, these UIs or catalogs should not need to install in the backend S4, however we still didd before, when the time we did not have Frontend NPL yet.

So after we check the catalogs from S4, we found out it's same error, which means the Backend S4, after the patch, it's also missing these SAP_TC_xxx catalogs

So, to be able to resolve this issue, we'll need to find a source that contains these SAP_TC_xxx_BE_APPS catalogs. Since these were existing before the patch, so it would be possible to find a spare Netweaver server and install these UI components in there, then acting as a backend Fiori server, run the extract tcode /UI2/APPDESC_GET from NPL again?