TAW12 ENHANCING DICTIONARY ELEMENTS

ENHANCEMENT TO THE ABAP DICTIONARY: OVERVIEW DIAGRAM

The changes made to the standard dictionary objects, such as tables or data elements are considered as enhancements.

TABLE ENHANCEMENT: OVERVIEW

Tables and structures can be enhanced with the help of these methods:
  Append structures

  Customizing includes

The user can create an append structure for an SAP table. Multiple append structures can be used for a specific table. The added fields appear to be an implicit part of the table structure.
Customizing includes are already integrated into SAP tables. The user can add fields to multiple tables or structures. These can also contain source codes or screen exits.

APPEND STRUCTURES

You can use append structures to add fields to a table without actually modifying the table itself. An append structure can only be assigned to a single table. However, a table may have several append structures attached to it. The fields of an append structure should follow proper naming convention. After an append structure is added, the table would finally look like the one shown here.


APPEND STRUCTURES AT UPGRADE

Append structures are created in the customer namespace. During an upgrade, when new versions of a standard table are imported, this naming convention helps them from being overwritten. On activation, the fields of the active append structures are appended to the new standard tables.

CUSTOMIZING INCLUDES

Unlike append structures, Customizing includes can be added to more than one table. The naming convention for customizing includes begins with ’CI_’, followed by the name of the include. After inserting Customizing includes, the table appears as shown here.


TEXT ENHANCEMENTS: OVERVIEW

F1 help on any field provides documentation for that particular field. The documentation shown to the customer is provided by SAP itself. SAP also provides its customers the freedom to load customer-specific documentation for a field or data element using the text enhancements.

OVERWRITING SAP FIELD LABELS (1)

The application programmers define field labels of different lengths with a brief description of each data element. These short descriptions can be overwritten by customer-defined texts.


OVERWRITING SAP FIELD LABELS (2)

You can call transaction CMOD, also known as project management to edit text enhancements. For this, you need to choose Goto → Global Enhancements → Keywords → Change. Subsequently, a dialog box opens where you need to specify the required text for overwriting SAP data elements.

PREREQUISITES FOR OVERWRITING AN SAP FIELD LABEL

If the field label for a screen field is not explicitly defined, field labels can be overwritten. In this case, the dictionary-modified attribute of the screen field has the value ‘F’.

OVERWRITTEN TEXTS IN UPGRADES

The customer-defined field labels need to be restored whenever SAP changes existing labels, or when there is a release upgrade. In such a situation, restoring the customer-defined labels is usually recommended. This can be achieved using the menu option, Restore customer.


RESTORING SAP FIELD LABELS

You can use the Restore SAP option to get the original field label for a screen field. A program running in the background checks all the edited data elements and restores their original field labels.

ENHANCED DOCUMENTATION FOR DATA ELEMENTS

When a user requests for data element documentation using ‘F1 help’, the developer has an option wherein the customer-defined documentation can be displayed along with the SAP documentation. The customer-defined documentation can be deleted if the original one is required.

CREATING CUSTOMER DOCUMENTATION

You can follow the specified menu path shown here to create customer documentation associated with a screen field. The described menu path opens a dialog box with two options, Original text and Template. If you select ‘Original text,’ you can add the customer-specific documentation to the SAP documentation. However, if you select ‘Template,’ you can create customer-specific text without incorporating the SAP documentation.