Knowledgebase » Volume 8 (2006) » Issue 3 (May/June)

Issue 3 (May/June)

An insider’s guide to writing robust, understandable, maintainable, state-of- the-art ABAP programs: Part 3 — additional best practices and administrative issues
by Andreas Blumenthal and Horst Keller

With the already large, and ever-increasing, amount of options available for ABAP programming, there has long been a need for a comprehensive guide to help navigate through the maze of possibilities and pitfalls. While many guidelines on the use of ABAP already exist both inside and outside of SAP, most tend to focus on specific areas of the language. Based upon the daily experiences of the ABAP Language Group at SAP, this article is the final installment of a three-part article series that aims to provide a cohesive set of recommendations on the use of key ABAP programming features that can serve as a foundation for or complement to guidelines specific to your own organization.
 

Ensure consistency and synchronization across your master data: Integrate your classification changes into customer and vendor master data ALE scenarios
by Anthony Cecchini

Nearly every SAP customer has used standard ALE scenarios to distribute customer and vendor master data changes across their SAP system landscapes. However, prior to SAP NetWeaver ’04, the classification data associated with customer and vendor master data is not included in distributions. This article outlines a two-part solution for keeping master data and associated classification data in synch. The first half of the article shows you how to create an extended IDoc that includes the associated classification data when master data changes are distributed. The second half of the article shows you how to trigger this same IDoc when only classification data is changed.
 

Processing text-based information in ABAP — best practices for improving performance
by Ralph Benzinger and Björn Mielenhausen

Much of the data that is processed by typical business applications, including product codes, currencies, and XML data, is stored as text. ABAP tightly integrates text processing into its runtime environment via a diverse set of data types and statements. Understanding the inner workings of the ABAP runtime and choosing the right data types is key to processing text effectively and efficiently. This article provides an overview of basic text (and byte) processing principles and shows how ABAP programs can be improved to increase their text processing performance.
 

Web services or RFCs — choosing the right technology for your SAP integration challenges
by Prof. Dr. Willi Nüßer

RFC is a well-established and trusted approach to integrating different applications in an SAP environment, but Web services, now supported with SAP Web Application Server 6.40, is emerging as a viable alternative based on open standards. Each approach has its strengths and limitations depending on the situation at hand, so when does it makes sense to use which? This article compares and contrasts the Web service and RFC approaches in terms of performance and transactional behavior to help you assess the role that each technology should play in your own SAP environment.
 

Centralize, harmonize, and distribute your master data with SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM)
by Klaus David

For companies maintaining distributed IT landscapes, accurate and consistent master data is crucial for business success; however, eliminating redundancy and inconsistencies across distributed system landscapes can be a daunting task. This article introduces SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM) 5.5, a key component of SAP NetWeaver ’04 that provides sophisticated tools for consolidating, synchronizing, and distributing your master data. It provides a detailed overview of the three predefined IT scenarios (Master Data Consolidation, Master Data Harmonization, and Central Master Data Maintenance) that enable you to implement the MDM capabilities you need, and walks you through the configuration of an example scenario.
 

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