Administrative Data

All of the objects you can create in BRFplus have, in addition to their type-specific properties, a common set of properties that are independent of the particular object type. These properties are referred to as administrative data.

You use these properties for identifying, searching, or grouping the BRFplus objects that are available in the system. In the BRFplus workbench, the administrative data can be found in the General section at the top of the maintenance screen for each object. You can decide whether you want this section be expanded or not by clicking (Collapse Tray / Expand Tray) at the right border of the section header. Displaying the section content gives you a quick overview of an object's administrative data, while hiding it gives you additional screen space for defining an object's settings.

Features

Overview

When you open a BRFplus object for viewing or editing, the system populates the work area of the UI with the respective object data. Whether the object's administrative data are initially displayed or hidden is subject to the respective setting in the Personalization settings.

Details

The detailed view of the administrative data is divided into the following tabs:

General

Here, the system displays a group of settings that have either been defined at creation time of an object (for example, the application to which an object belongs) or are automatically derived from activities in the system (such as the creation or change date). These settings are therefore presented in read-only mode, with the exception of the object's Access Level, which can be changed by the user. For more information about access levels, see Setting an Access Level.

Texts

With the text settings, you can control how the descriptive name (not the technical name) of an object is presented in the user interface. The different options offered by the system depend on the Source that you select for the object texts:

Free text input
With this option, the short and long text have to be entered manually by the user.
Text symbol
With this option, the text defined for a given text symbol (also known as text element) of a given ABAP report in the backend system is used as the object's text.

Unlike the other options, the Text symbol option supports only one text field and therefore cannot be used to differentiate between short and long texts.
Exit class
With this option, the short and long text provided by the given exit class are used as the object's text.

The following section describes the text options depending on the Source that you select:

Free text input
- Dependency
  For object texts to be entered manually, you can specify whether these texts remain constant across all versions and languages, or if the texts shall be distinguished by language, version, or both.
  - Language dependency
    For language-dependent texts, the system displays an additional field where you can select the desired language. This field offers all the languages that are available in the system. Once you have chosen the desired language, you can maintain the texts for this language. This option is useful and it can even be legally required if you plan to use a BRFplus application in countries with different languages.
  - Version dependency
    For objects that are under version control, you can define that the texts shall also be version-dependent. With this setting, each new version of an object contains a copy of the object texts that are carried over from the previous version. These texts can then be overwritten in the new version without affecting the texts that were in place in the previous version. This can be useful if a complex object like a formula expression has been changed substantially from one version to another, or if an object text must properly reflect the name of an external entity that has been renamed in the course of time.
- Language
  From the available languages, choose one and maintain the short and long text for this language. This field is available only if you have defined the object texts as language-dependent.
- Short Text, Text
  Enter the texts for the current object. Short texts can hold up to 20 characters, texts up to 80 characters. The short text that you enter is used by the BRFplus workbench for displaying the object unless you decide that you want to see technical names only. To control the display behavior, choose (Personalize) and then General Display Technical Names .
Note
The system has a fallback mechanism in case the text to be used according to the personalization settings is not available (for example, because the required text has not been maintained for the current logon language, or the object in question is unnamed). The system then tries to display a text according to the following order of precedence:
1. Short text
2. Long text
3. Dynamic string representation of significant elements of the object definition (for example, the value of a constant as a string)
End of the note.
Text Symbol
- Program Name
  Enter the technical name of the ABAP report for which a text symbol is defined that you want to use as the current object's text.
- Key
  Enter the ID of the text symbol defined for the above report that you want to use. Once you have entered the symbol ID and press Enter, the string maintained for the text symbol is displayed as Text.
- Language
  From the list of languages available in the system, choose one to check which text is displayed if a user is logged on in that language.
  
  Note
  Be aware that the Language list is only meant to help you find out which different language versions of the selected text symbol exist. As opposed to this, it cannot be used to maintain additional language versions. This can only be accomplished by using the appropriate translation tools for the text elements assigned to the referenced report.
  
  End of the note.
Exit class
With this option, the short and long text provided by the given exit class is used as the object's texts.

Note
The exit class that you enter here must implement the IF_FDT_TEXT_DOCU_EXIT interface. The workbench uses the methods provided by this interface to retrieve the texts for the object. The workbench supports you in finding a suitable class by restricting the classes shown in the value help to those that fulfill this prerequisite.

Note that this class setting is not related to the application exit class.

End of the note.

Documentation

BRFplus offers you the possibility to maintain a documentation for each single object you create, like functions, expressions, data objects, etc. This is especially useful for complex objects like formulas or decision trees that have an immediate influence on how the system handles a particular business case but can sometimes be difficult to understand.

The options available for object documentation are very similar to those offered for texts. Therefore, the following part only describes the documentation-specific features, while those features that text and documentation have in common are left out. Please refer to the Texts section above.

Free text input
With this option, you can manually enter a documentation text of any length.
SAPscript object
With this option, the text contained in the specified SAPscript document is referenced as the object's documentation.
Exit class
With this option, the documentation provided by the given exit class is used as the object's documentation.

The following section describes the text options depending on the Source that you select:

Free text input
- Dependency, Language
  Same as described above in Texts section.
SAPscript object
- ID
  Document class ID of the SAPscript document you want to use for the object's documentation. Examples of possible values are TX for general texts, RE for report documentation, DT for dialog texts, etc.
- Object
  Technical name of the SAPscript document you want to use for the object's documentation.
Exit class
- Exit Class
  Enter the name of the exit class you want to use for providing the object's documentation.
  
  Note
  The exit class that you enter here must implement the IF_FDT_TEXT_DOCU_EXIT interface. The workbench uses the methods provided by this interface to retrieve the documentation for the object. The workbench supports you in finding a suitable class by restricting the classes shown in the value help to those that fulfill this prerequisite.
  
  Note that this class setting is not related to the application exit class.
  
  End of the note.
- Documentation
  In this field, the BRFplus workbench displays the documentation text provided by the exit class you have entered in the Exit Class field.
If the predefined functionality of dynamically providing object documentation with the help of an exit class is still not flexible enough for you, you might want to develop individual extensions to this concept. For example, if you have a user license for SAP Knowledge Warehouse, it would be possible to create additional documentation in the Knowledge Warehouse and have the interface method implemented by the exit class display the topic related to a particular BRFplus object. However, such extensions are completely customer-specific and are not supported by SAP.

Note Note

For data objects that have been bound to a DDIC object, the Text and Documentation parts of the administrative data automatically inherit the respective data stored in the DDIC for the bound object. This does also comprise all the different language versions that may be available in the DDIC. Text and documentation are treated differently by the system in the following respect:

The inherited texts are imported into the BRFplus repository as default values for a bound data object but can be overwritten if desired.
The inherited documentation is imported into the BRFplus repository by reference and cannot be changed.

For more information, see Data Binding.

End of the note.

Versions

You can access all versions of a given object that are stored in the system. The version list always contains at least one entry (the current version). For each version, the system displays the following information:

Property	Description
Version	Version number. In case of complex object types, this column does also contain a triangle icon that you can use to expand the object structure in the Object Type column (see below).
User Name	Logon name of the user who saved the object version
Time Stamp	Date and time when the object version was saved
Processing-relevant changes	Gives access to the list of changes made in a version that are relevant for processing and may influence the process flow. Here are some examples for this kind of change: Constant value changed Formula expression modified Constant expression replaced by decision table
Non Processing-relevant changes	Gives access to the list of changes made in a version that are not relevant for processing and have no influence on the process flow. Here are some examples for this kind of change: Short text changed Versioning switched off Dependency type changed for object documentation
Versioning	Indicates whether versioning is switched on, and if so, which versioning mode is in effect. This setting is either On, Transported by <transport ID>, or Not transported for versions preceding the current version and may be either on or off for the current version.
Object Type	Type of the current object. In case of complex objects, this column displays the expanded object structure. For example, a table data object version can be expanded to show its structure and elements that were present in a particular version.

Depending on the definition of a particular object, the object name displayed in the Name column may be preceded by a small triangular icon. This indicates that the object version contains nested objects that are also versioned. After expanding the list of nested objects, you can directly access the nested objects' version.

Additional Information

With the additional information presented on this tab, the system helps you to identify the origin of a BRFplus object. Here you can find out the name of the system where an object has originally been created, the ID of the transport request used to import the object into the current system, and the client number in the source system from which the object has been exported.

If a non-local object has been changed and therefore been recorded in a transport request waiting for release, the respective transport request is displayed. In that case, the transport ID displayed serves as a link. When you click it, the system opens the transport analysis tool with detailed information on that transport request.

The degree to which the fields are populated with values gives you a hint of the current system's nature with respect to the current object: If your current system is the same as the object's original system, then only the system field contains a value while the other fields remain empty (because there was no transport needed).

More Information

Documentation of System Objects

Versioning