Creating a Help View

Enter the name of the view in the initial screen of the ABAP Dictionary, select object class Views and click on Create. The name of a help view should begin with H_. A dialog box appears, in which you must choose the type of the view. Select the type Help view.

The maintenance screen for help views appears. You will see three input areas for tables, join conditions and view fields. Carry out the following actions in this screen:

  1. Enter a short explanatory text in the field Short text.
  2. In Tables, enter the primary tables of the view.
  3. Save your entries.

    4. You are requested to assign the view a development class. You can change this development class later with Extras ® Object directory entry. The key fields of the primary table are copied as defaults to the view.

  4. If required, include more tables in the view. In a help view you can only include tables which are linked to one another with foreign keys.

    5. Position the cursor on the primary table and choose Relationships. All existing foreign key relationships of the primary table are displayed. Select the required foreign keys and choose Copy. The secondary tables involved in such a foreign key are included in the view. The join conditions derived from the foreign keys are displayed ( Foreign Key Relationship and Join Condition).

    You can also include tables which are linked with one of the secondary tables already included. In this case, position the cursor on the secondary table and choose Relationships. Then proceed as described above.

    You can only select foreign keys in which the secondary table for the primary table or for the secondary table which transitively preceded it is in a n:1 relationship. This is the case if the secondary table is the check table of the base table and the foreign key was not defined generically. If the Bsis table is the check table, the foreign key fields must be key fields of a text table or the foreign key must have cardinality of n:1 or n:C.

    The foreign keys violating these conditions are displayed at the end of the list under the header Relationships with unsuitable cardinality.

  5. Select the fields which you want to include in the view.

    6. You can enter the field names directly. If you do not know the field names, you can also transfer them from the tables. To do this, position the cursor on a table and choose TabFields. The fields of the table are now displayed in a dialog box. You can copy fields from here by marking the first column and choosing Copy.

  6. Formulate the selection conditions by choosing Goto ® Selection condition. The input area for the selection conditions appears in place of the input area for the fields. Maintain the selection condition as described in Maintaining the Selection Condition for a View. You can then switch back to the fields display with Goto ® View fields.
  7. Activate the view with View ® Activate. A log is written during activation. You can display this with Utilities ® Activation log. Errors or warnings occurring during the activation of the view are displayed directly in the activation log.
  8. Create the documentation on the view with Goto ® Documentation. This documentation is output for example when you print the view with View ® Print.

Optional Settings

You can make the following optional settings:

Select the Mod column (modify) for the view field and press Enter. The Data element field is now ready for input. Enter the new data element there. This data element must refer to the same domain as the original data element. With the F4 help key for the Data element field, you can display all the data elements which refer to the domain of the field. If you want to assign the original data element again, you only have to reset the Mod flag and press Enter again.

With Extras ® Runtime object ® Check you can determine whether the definition of the view in the ABAP Dictionary maintenance is identical to the specifications in the runtime object of the view. With Extras ® Runtime object ® Display you can display the runtime object of the view.

If a join condition was derived from a foreign key, you can display its definition. To do so, position the cursor on the join condition and choose Extras ® Foreign keys.

See also:

Help Views