Documenting the BAPI

The quality of your BAPI documentation depends on the following principle:

The documentation must be in sufficient detail so that an external developer familiar with the business background but not with the SAP System, can use the BAPI.

The documentation for the BAPI covers four areas:

1. The SAP business object type documentation .

2. The method documentation should answer the following questions:

   1. What is the business function of the BAPI and what is it used for?

   2. What do the BAPI functions actually do?

   3. Are there any important limitations, that is, are there functions that this BAPI cannot perform?

   4. What must you pay particular attention to with this BAPI (for example, authorization checks)? What other prerequisites apply to the BAPI?

   5. Are there any Customizing dependencies?

   6. What dependencies are there between this BAPI and other BAPIs, and between individual method parameters?

   7. Is it a BAPI with buffering?

      If it is, the BAPI must be explicitly identified as such.

   8. Does the BAPI contain a COMMIT WORK command?

      If it does, it must be documented.

3. The BAPI parameter documentation answers the following questions:

   1. What is the parameter used for?

   2. Which fields of a parameter must be filled, that is, what are the mandatory fields?

   3. What are the dependencies between fields?

      Are there parameter dependencies and field dependencies within a structure?

   4. Are there any fixed values and what do they do?

   5. What are the default values of the parameter?

      All the fields that are assigned default values by Customizing and are therefore write-protected, must be documented.

   6. Does the documentation of the return parameter comply with the guidelines and does it contain all the relevant error messages?

   7. If there is a termination, is a database rollback executed as an exception within the BAPI?

      If it is, you must describe this process in the documentation for the return parameter.

   8. Are all the available BAPI table extensions listed in the documentation on the extension parameters ( ExtensionIn , ExtensionOut )?

4. Data element documentation underlying the fields in the BAPI parameters.

   Note

   Finally, you must also make sure that the documentation about the function modules and parameters has been saved by the documentation developer as an Inactive Version so that it appears in the translator's worklist.

   Example

   Refer to Examples of BAPI Documentation . See also the documentation about the demo business object types Flight , FlightBooking , and FlightCustomer , and the corresponding BAPI methods.