Assigning Title, Format, and Notes 

The first attributes you must define when creating or changing a query are the title and page format. This is the first screen of the Field selection sequence.

SAP Query uses the title you define in this screen later as the title of the screen or, when printing, as the first line of the heading for the lists generated by the query.

Additionally, there are three lines where you can enter notes that are used to document the query. When you request the query directory, the system displays these notes with the title.

There is a standard format for lists displayed on the screen, but you can always overwrite this. Unless you specify otherwise, the system automatically adapts the standard format to the output device used. For output to the screen, the default is a dynamic page size (i.e. no fixed number of lines) and 83 columns. In the case of output to a printer, the system proposes a standard format on the print option screen, but you can also overwrite this.

With the number of columns, you define how wide list lines can be. Regardless of this, however, the width of each sublist is no more than is actually required. The number of columns determines when a line break occurs in basic lists. With statistics and ranked lists, the number of columns must be large enough to avoid line breaks.

If you define statistics or ranked lists at a later stage, the number of columns may increase automatically. In this case, you get a warning message.

The advantage of dynamic page size is that the system adapts the dimensions of your list to the size of the window. You should therefore usually use the dynamic page size. Each of the different sublists (basic list, statistics and ranked lists) always begins on a new page.

If you want to display a list as a table, you can define the size of the table view control with the table format specifications.

Special attributes allow you to define some other properties for the query or the report that it generates.

You can create one standard variant per query. This variant is always used when you start the query with the help of the function Execute. The name of this standard variant is also the default value for the Execute with variant function. Any query with a standard variant is thus always executed with a variant.

Remember that you can only maintain query variants on the initial screen. For this reason, defining a standard variant is possible only when you have already defined a query to the extent that you can generate a report.

For further information about working with variants, refer to Executing Queries Online.

Besides the standard variant, there is also the attribute Execute only with variant. You use the standard variant only if you execute the query in the component Maintain Queries. However, the attribute Execute only with variant applies to the generated report and is therefore also effective when you start this report directly.

If you want to set a change lock for your query to protect it against changes by other users, you can achieve this by selecting the appropriate field. Then, only the person who set the attribute can make further changes.

By choosing Goto à Query directory in the component Maintain InfoSets, the system administrator can cancel the lock for selected queries.

This option allows you to decide whether you want to output a standard title, which does not appear in the screen display, for each page when printing a list. The standard title contains the date, the query title and the page numbering.

A standard title is also generated if you execute the query in the background.

If you do not want the standard title, but need the date or the page numbering, you must maintain your headers accordingly (see Changing Headers).

This option allows you to designate the size of the left margin when printing the list. This option does not affect the screen output of the list.

The radio buttons on the selection screen of the generated report are pre-set as a result of the options for forwarding a list (see Interactive Functions for Further List Processing).

The Goto à Report assignment function can be used to integrate the query into the Report-Report-Interface. This means that the query both can be called via this interface (as recipient) and can itself call other reports (as sender). The term ‘report’ is a collective term referring to ABAP reports (including queries), transactions, Report Writer reports, EIS drill-down reports and report portfolio reports.

When the Goto à Report assignment function is called, a window appears. The other reports that can be called from the query (if the query is the sender) are specified in this window. Since every query is also a report, this technique can be used to combine several queries with each other. This represents a new type of drill-down technique in SAP Query. The way that data is exchanged is described in Calling Other Reports.

If multiple sublists (basic lists, statistics, ranked lists) are defined for a query, you can use the function Edit à Output sequence to designate the order in which these sublists should be displayed. When you call this function, a dialog box appears in which all sublists that have been defined up until this point are listed in the order that they are displayed. An input field appears in front of each sublist, where a number between 1 and 90 can be entered. This sequence determines the output sequence of the sublists. Sublists with no sequence number (the standard setting) will be displayed in the order they appear in this list after those sublists with sequence numbers have already been displayed.

If two or more sublists have the same sequence number or no number at all, the order basic lists before statistics before ranked lists is used.

The function Edit ® Output sequence is available on all maintenance screens.

To go to the next screen, select Next screen.