The Structure Mapper 
Purpose
The Structure Mapper is a generic tool to handle complex mapping requirements based on some specific rules. It provides simple customization for creating mapping from a set of DDIC structures to destination DDIC structures. To ease the entire process of mapping a Dialog Program is provided to support this tool.
Features
Generates mapping code for all mappings dynamically (not hardcoded).
Since segment structures are generated anew for every BDoc Repository upload, this tool stores the ‚Table name‘ and ‚Transaction id‘ instead of segment DDIC structure names.
Handles complex mapping requirement, i.e. based on some specific rules etc.
The generated code states which input structure – fields are moved to output structures- fields.
The generated code also validates whether certain conditions are to be satisfied before mapping takes place.
If the SFA keys of the destination structure (BDoc segment) is mapped , the system would set the task for all messages to insert. The user then needs to provide the SFA keys either in temporary tables or through exits. The function module "SYSTEM_UUID_C_CREATE" can be used to generate the keys.
Structure Mapper repository details can be transported to other R/3 systems. If the user has the authority to create transport requests and update data (create, modify and delete) the changes will be put to a request.
The user has the option to disable/enable the transport request by selecting the appropriate item from the menu. By default the transport request is enabled.
- If, however, the user does not have the authority or for any other reason transport is not possible, the user would be informed and the changes would be SAVED locally.
To ensure that the data regarding mappings are entered correctly, a front-end is available for maintenance of the Structure Mapper tables.
This front-end ensures the following:
- Checks whether input DDIC structure exists.
- Validations such as checking if the field is really a member of the structure etc.
- Validations whether a condition string is syntactically correct
- Validations on restrictions placed on map entries, which are marked for both forward and reverse mapping.
In the generated code, exits are provided so that the data can be modified before writing into the destination. This is important if any business rules have to be validated before mapping. It is important that these exits are kept to a minimum to ensure fast performance.
The function group SMO9_STRUMAP_EXITS, contains functions which will be called before and after the default structure mapping code.
Constraints
Structure Mapper’s limitations are neither due to limitations of ABAP/4 nor due to faults in design or implementation. The points noted down might be due to enhancements which might make the Structure Mapping code slow.
- Selecting data from physical database.
Since mapping code will be called dynamically, the interface for the function parameters needs to be the same for all function modules, irrespective of the mapname, the structures or tables involved. So data is input & output using a generic structure to hold data in a string buffer, instead of their respective segment / table structure.
- Options available in F4 help.
In this help, all the tables defined in the Structure Mapper application for a given map will be displayed. However, the BDoc’ details can contain only customer tables.