Thursday, May 18, 2006

SAP R/3 : Transporting Table and its content

Recently, my colleague and me had a conversation on transporting tables and its data content. According to him in SAPFans' forum, transparent table can be transported from DEV to QAS together with its data.


To perform that activity:
1. Go to SE11 and choose a table or your test table.
2. Choose technical / Maintenance tab.
3. Select C as the delivery class. C option will enable you to transport data from DEV to QAS.


There are a few options in the delivery class that you might want to check it out. Click F1 to learn more about it.



is sky the limit... data transport...

Friday, May 05, 2006

SAP R/3 : ZHRI03 on 401K Plan List Download

ZHRI03 is a report that downloads a list of employee who are contributing 401K plan. This file will then be send to AMVESCAP for further processing. In this ZHRI03 program, an HIRDT field was not obtaining the value accurately and the Functional does not know which infotype it was using. Upon investigation, the HIRDT field is a Hire Date and is using infotype 0000. In this infotype, the BEGDA is the value being fed to HIRDT.

"The 401K plan is a retirement plan for employees in US. Similar to us having EPF in Malaysia. For more information on 401K retirement plan please refer to this link: The 401K Help Center"


Another problem was the text file being downloaded was not showing the HIRDT value. Therefore, there were two problems pertaining to ZHRI03 (ZHRI0003).

Solution:

HIRDT value should be from infotype 0041 (Date Specification) using date type Z2 or Z1.

“One portion of the original code was modified and added so that the HIRDT field obtains accurate and correct date value”

The text file that is not displaying the value is modified at the later section in the ZHRI0003. The internal table that is used to pass data to the download function did not have that HIRDT field filled.

“That internal table named I_DOWN was modified so that the HIRDT field is filled accordingly from the I_DETAIL. I_DETAIL internal table holds the process HIRDT value.”

Development took at least 3 hours including testing and debugging. One hour was allocated to do investigation.

Is sky the limit… ZHRI0003

SAP R/3 : Activation Process (Conversion)

In SAP system it is a must that developers perform activation after they are done with their modification or creation of a transparent table (this include performing table maintenance generator and the technical setting). While an active version of a transparent table is a version of a component of the runtime environment access but an inactive version will not reflect any latest update during the runtime event thus the active one will not reflect any changes.

In order to have transparent tables being reflected with the latest modification the activation process is carried out. This will change the inactive version into an active version. Activation process is not only for transparent tables but to any table types.

During the activation process, there are seven steps that the SAP system has behind it. This is not shown to the ABAPers nor the Functional. The process is automated and it will only show if it’s successful or have problems. Problems will be display and errors described in a report.

Condition:
Table X is enhance with a new field. Thus, we have one Active version Table X and one Revised version Table X. Revised version Table X will have the new field. Active version Table X is the old version. Now the activation process will activate Table X to have the latest changes. So below is the seven steps leading to the new Table X.

Step 1 : Set Lock

Active version Table X is locked against further structural changes.

Step 2 : Rename Table
Active version Table X is renamed as QCMTAB.
All indexes in QCMTAB is deleted.

Step 3 : Activating Tables
Revised version Table X is then activated as Active version Table X.
Active version Table X is now created in the database as QCM8TAB.

Step 4 : Reload Data

Data is then copied from QCMTAB to QCM8TAB.

Step 5 : Delete the QCM Table

QCMTAB is no longer required then it is deleted.

Step 6 : Rename Table and Create Secondary Indexes
QCM8TAB is renamed back to Table X.
Secondary indexes are defined back into Table X.

Step 7 : Remove the Lock
Table X is unlock and ready to use with new features.
Is sky the limit… Seven Activation Steps