Editing Inheritance Templates

Use

This procedure describes how you create and change an inheritance template.

Prerequisites

  • Under Specify Groups in Customizing for Basic Data and Tools, you have defined the groups that you require for inheritance templates. You have then assigned these groups to the group tree for inheritance templates under Specify Group Trees and Assign Groups.

  • You have change authorization for the group of inheritance templates in which you want to create the inheritance template or in which the inheritance template that you want to change is located.

Procedure

  1. Call the specification workbench.

  2. In the navigation area, choose Specification Category. Specification Category stands for the Specification Category of the specifications for which you want to create an inheritance template or for which you have created the inheritance template that you want to change.

    The Edit Specification: Initial Screen appears.

  3. Choose Specification → Inheritance → Edit Templates.

    The Edit Inheritance Templates dialog box appears. The group overview of the inheritance templates is displayed.

    Note Note

    You can also call the group overview of the inheritance templates in the same way from the Edit Specification: Hit List and Edit Specification: Header screens.

    End of the note.
Creating Inheritance Templates

  1. Position the cursor on the group in which you want to create an inheritance template and choose Create Inheritance Templates.

    The Create Inheritance Templates dialog box appears.

  2. On the Hdr and Desc. tab pages, enter data as required, choose Transfer, and confirm the confirmation prompt by choosing Yes.

    The inheritance template is added to the group as a group entry.

  3. Choose the inheritance template by double-clicking the group entry.

  4. If required, specify usages, identifiers, and value assignment types whose data, with the aid of the inheritance template, is to be used for inheritance. Note the following:

    • If data (identifiers and value assignments) is to be passed on irrespective of their usage, you must specify this explicitly.

    • If data (identifiers and value assignments) is to be passed on regardless of its usage, in other words, if the usage specified for the data in the source specification is not to be taken into account as a filter for the inheritance, set the All usages indicator.

      Note Note

      In general, only active identifiers and value assignments are passed on, in other words, only the identifiers for which the Active indicator is set. If you set the All usages indicator in the inheritance template, inactive identifiers and value assignments as well as identifiers and value assignments without a usage are passed on too.

      End of the note.

    • If all the identifiers in the source specification are to be passed on, in other words if all existing identification categories and identification types are to be taken into account when identifiers are passed on, set the All identifiers indicator. If you do not specify any identifiers and do not set the indicator, no identifiers are passed on.

    • If value assignments of all the value assignment types in the source specification are to be passed on, set the All value assignment types indicator. If only the data for certain value assignment types is to be passed on, proceed as follows:

      • Choose Choose value assignment types.

      • In the property tree, use the Select/Deselect Node function to select the required value assignment types and confirm the selection.

      If you do not specify any value assignment types and do not set the All Assigned Values indicator, no value assignments are passed on.

      You can make both specific and generic entries for usages and identifiers:

      For generic entries: Leave the Rating and Validity Area fields empty in the usages; and leave the Language or Identifier Category fields empty in the identifiers.

      The system checks that the line content does not overlap:

      • Identifiers with the same category must either have a different language or different type.

        An example of a combination that is not permitted:

        NUM/CAS und NUM/<generic>.

      • Usages that have the same rating are not permitted to contain validity areas with shared countries or regions.

        Validity areas are broken down into countries and regions.

        Some examples of combinations that are not permitted:

        PUBLIC/DE and PUBLIC/REG_WORLD

        INTERNAL/DE and INTERNAL/DE_BW (DE_BW is a region of DE)

        PUBLIC/DE and PUBLIC/<generic>

      • Usages with the same validity area are not permitted to have generic ratings.

        • An example of a combination that is not permitted:

        • PUBLIC/De and <generic>/DE

    The usages that you specify on the inheritance specification determine which data records are copied and which usages are contained in the data records in the target specification:

    • There is no generic rating entered:

      Data records are only passed on if, for every inheritance template use, they have relevant active usages with validity areas that completely contain the validity area of the inheritance template.

      For example, validity area REG_EU contains validity area DE.

    • Generic ratings are entered:

    Data records are passed on if they have an active usages with validity areas that completely contain the validity area of the inheritance template.

    Caution Caution

    Usages

    End of the caution.

    Rating

    Validity area category

    Validity area

    Inheritance

    PUBLIC

    <empty>

    <empty>

    All data rated as PUBLIC, regardless of the validity area

    <empty>

    REGION

    REG_EU

    All data that applies to REG_EU, regardless of the rating

    Identifiers

    Language

    Identification Cat.

    Identification Type

    Inheritance

    <empty>

    NUM

    <empty>

    All numbers

    <empty>

    NAM

    PROD

    Product names in all languages

  5. If required, set one or more indicators under Permitted change options. You use these indicators to specify whether the value assignments passed on using the inheritance template can be changed temporarily or permanently and whether the inheritance relationship can be deactivated:

    • If you set the Changes to target specifications indicator, the value assignments that have been passed on can be temporarily overwritten in the target specification.

      If a change is made to the source specification that causes the data to be inherited to be recalculated, all of the value assignments that are overwritten temporarily for the target specification are replaced by the value assignments of the source specification.

    • If you set the Exclusion from inher. indicator, the value assignments that have been passed on can be permanently overwritten in the target specification.

      As soon as the value assignments that have been passed on have been overwritten once, changes made to the corresponding value assignments in the source specification are no longer passed on to the target specification. The value assignments overwritten in the target specification can be passed on again.

    • If you set the Deactiv. inheritance relationship indicator, the inheritance relationship between the source or target specification can be deactivated and reactivated as required.

      • If the inheritance relationship has been deactivated and the data (identifiers and value assignments) in the source specification is changed, the corresponding data in the target specification is not updated. You can overwrite the data that has been passed on in the target specification.

      • If the connection is reactivated, the data in the target specification is updated again in accordance with the source specification.

  6. Choose Save, then Apply.

Changing Inheritance Templates

  1. Double-click the inheritance template that you want to change.

  2. Change usages, identifiers, and value assignment types as required whose data, with the aid of the inheritance template, is to be used for inheritance. Note that when you edit an inheritance template that has already been used in an inheritance relationship, you can only change it if data that has been passed on is not deleted. A corresponding warning is displayed if an inheritance template that you want to change is already being used. When you change an inheritance template, the system automatically prevents you from making changes to the inheritance template that are not permitted. In detail, this means that:

    • You can add new identification categories and types since this results in a larger number of identifiers being passed on. However, you cannot delete existing identification categories and types.

    • You can change usages if this does not restrict the data.

      For example, instead of the validity area DE you can define all validity areas or a region of DE, such as DE_BW, since all data records that are valid for DE_BW are always valid for DE too because DE_BW is contained in DE.

    • You can delete individual usages. As a result of usages being linked by an AND logic operation in the inheritance template, the inheritance template is restricted less if you delete a usage.

      For example, you can delete the usage INTERNAL/US from the usages PUBLIC/DE and INTERNAL/US.

    • You cannot replace an individual usage with another (for example, PUBLIC/DE with PUBLIC/FR).

    • You cannot reset the All usages, All identifiers or All value assignment types indicators if they are set. However, you can set them if they have not yet been set.

    When you enter data, also note the information given in the Creating Inheritance Templates section.

    Note Note

    You can no longer undo changes that you make to an inheritance template already being used in an inheritance relationship after you have saved the data, since the background job may pass on the corresponding data immediately.

    End of the note.

  3. Choose Save, then Apply.

Result

You can use the inheritance template in inheritance in order to create inheritance relationships between specifications.

If you have changed an inheritance template that is used in an active and consistent inheritance relationship, this inheritance relationship is assigned the status Ready to inherit. The system then starts the background job for the inheritance. This background job updates the data in the target specification in accordance with the changed inheritance template.