Service BAPIs for Help Functions 
Service BAPIs for Help Functions
Use
A number of service BAPIs provide basic help functions. Service BAPIs provide information or services for BAPIs from individual application components.
The service BAPIs can be found in the BOR component hierarchy under Basis ® Middleware.
For details of individual service BAPIs refer to the BAPI documentation in the BOR.
Features
BAPIs for Accessing Interface Documentation
Using the BAPIs below, you can display the documentation and descriptions of BAPI interfaces:
This method determines the input values (F4 help) for a BAPI parameter field. The method displays valid input values for a specific BAPI parameter field, enabling end-users to enter a correct value in the input field.
This method reads the documentation (F1 help) on the BAPI parameter fields. It allows you to provide end-users with descriptions of BAPI parameter fields.
This method reads the entire interface documentation of a BAPI. You can access documentation on the business object type, method, parameters and parameter fields.
This method reads SAP object documentation that has hyperlinks to a document, which was itself created with either the BapiService.InterfaceGetDocu() or the BapiService.HyperLinkGetText() method.
BAPIs for Interpreting Error Messages
The BAPIs below help you to interpret BAPI error messages:
This method displays the short and long texts of BAPI error messages.
This method reads the entries in the application log.
BAPIs for Controlling COMMIT and ROLLBACK
The transaction model (see
Transaction Model for Developing BAPIs) stipulates that every BAPI which creates object instances or changes object data is responsible for database consistency.The commands used to write changes to the database or to reset changes (COMMIT and ROLLBACK), must not be executed by the BAPI itself, they have to be called directly from the external application program.
External programs can use the following service BAPIs for these calls:
This method executes a COMMIT WORK command. When you call BAPIs in your program that change data in the SAP System, you must then call this method to pass the changes to the database.
This method executes a ROLLBACK WORK command. When you call BAPIs in your program that change data in the SAP System, you can use this method to prevent the changes being written to the database. This works provided that the BAPI BapiService.TransactionCommit() has not already forwarded the changes to the database.
BAPIs for Converting Between Internal and External Data Formats (Domain Conversion)
BAPIs are programming interfaces, not end-user interfaces. For this reason a neutral data format (with some exceptions) must be used in BAPIs. Fields in BAPI parameters are displayed in the BAPI interface in the internal format used in the database, not in a formatted form.
When you call a BAPI in your program, you need to use the external data format, to display data on the screen, for example. You can use the following conversion BAPIs to display the data in the required format:
This BAPI converts data from the internal format into the required external format.
This BAPI converts data from the external format into the required internal format.
The data can only be converted provided that the conversion routines for the domains underlying the data to be converted are maintained in the ABAP Dictionary. Otherwise, the data is returned unconverted.
The graphic below shows where conversion BAPIs are used:
Conversion BAPIs
