Sunday, November 23, 2008

SAP R/3 : READ_TEXT and WRITE_TEXT

In any SAP modules' standard screen functions, users and functionals get to maintain certain text like remarks, vendor notes, and others important elements in the header. These extra notes are stored somwhere in SAP's transparent table. Furthermore, SAP forms and customize forms also make use abundant of such feature like having a certain format of signature stored somewhere at a specific location and later read out to the template for printing or viewing.

These are what I call free texts that is non specific that is not specifically catered by SAP to be saved by certain fields. Hence, these texts are not similar to fields like BUKRS, MATNR, or MEINS but its of RAW format.

"RAW text is a machine readable form of characters or string of characters that is before being process by any analytical software, in this case our very own SAP"

RAW text is gibberish to any developer's view. User or functional will not be able to read it straight from SE16. SE16 won't even show this field that contains RAW format. RAW format for this entry I am referring to non other tables than STXH and STXL. All your free text wheter used in SAPScript or standard screens are stored here in STXL. TCODES such as SO10 and SE75 are both tools for you to create text. Underlying code that keeps such data are RAW format. So the question will be how do i see those RAW text without using those TCODES?

You will need the following functino module : 'READ_TEXT', 'EDIT_TEXT', 'WRITE_TEXT' and so on. You can always refer to this function module's documentation to know more about STXH and STXL tables. Afterall, this is one functino module provided by SAP for you to see RAW format.

This function module is an analytic processing logic to read RAW formatted string of characters. As an ABAP developer, this function module is your next best girl friend to develop/maintain your SAPScript fonts or programs that need to extract long text out from the system.

Another alternative, you can go to SPRO to maintain it.

SPRO->IMG->TO CONFIG TEXT ID
STXH is the text header transparent table
STXL is the text line transparent table
STXD is the text file header

In addition to the above, I found several tables that normally associates itself to RAW format are as follows :
1. VBBP (Billing)
2. EBAN (Requisition)
3. BELEG (JV)
4. PMS (Project and WBS)

I list the following above in the following order of what I usually get acquainted with my daily assignments.

Here's a link that I'd found:
is sky the limit... read text and write text for RAW