Mass Change 
The BRFplus workbench provides an easy-to-use interface for creating and maintaining the various objects that make up a business rules application. However, when it comes to changes that have to be applied to many objects in the same way, navigating between the objects can become tedious and uncomfortable. To overcome this problem, BRFplus offers a mass change tool that lets you carry out object changes with little effort, regardless of how many objects are affected by a particular change.
The following mass change activities are supported by the tool:
Check
Activate
Mark as obsolete
Remove obsolete flag
Mark for deletion
Remove deletion flag
Delete
Set access level
Set versioning status
Rename
Copy
Export to XML
The mass change tool is also useful in situations where you want to change several objects, but the change itself slightly differs from object to object rather than applying exactly the same change to all selected objects.
Example
You have built up a new business rules application. You have created a set of data objects and to ease your life, you created them all quickly by copying the first data object, with no further modifications. You can now load all these data objects into the mass change tool and edit the names and texts of all the objects individually. Once you are done, you click Save to let the system write all the changes into the database at once.
Features
Scope
The scope of objects that are loaded into the mass change tool depends on how you start the tool. You have the following options:
Main Menu
Choose
Tools 
Mass Change 
. The system behavior depends on the current workbench status:No object selected
The system loads all applications into the tool that have been created by the currently logged on user.
Object selected
The system loads the application to which the selected object belongs into the tool, with the selected object marked.
Context Menu in Navigation Panel
From the context menu of an object displayed in the navigation panel, choose
Tools Mass Change . The system loads the application to
which the selected object belongs into the tool, with the selected object marked.Search Inside Mass Change
With the mass change tool running, choose Search and enter the search criteria. All objects matching the search criteria are loaded into the tool. This is the only option where the root element in each row is not necessarily an application.
Note
Inside the mass change tool, you can force the system to display the contents of all applications created by the currently logged on user by choosing Show My Applications. This option results in the same object scope as if you would have started the mass change tool with no object currently selected (see above).
Once the system has populated the list of objects, you can recursively expand each of the listed objects to access all the objects being used by it.
Object Selection
You mark objects to build up a selection of objects to which you want to apply a particular change. Changes can be made to all objects that are currently loaded into the tool. This is even true for objects that belong to different applications.
Selecting Individual Objects
You select the objects to be changed by clicking the respective table row with the row selection button at the beginning of the row. To select more than one object, click the table row while holding the Shift key or the Ctrl key. To select all objects that are loaded into the tool, choose Select All Items.
Selecting Object Hierarchies
It is often necessary to ensure that a change is not only applied to a particular object but also to all objects that are used by the first object. You can accomplish this by setting the Uses flag for the first object. With that, the system includes all subordinate objects into the selection.
Note
The tool cannot resolve object relationships that go beyond application boundaries. Such cross-application constellations can occur with objects whose access level has been set to a less restrictive level than the Application level defined as the system default. Here, the object drilldown stops whenever the tool determines a dependent object that originates from a different application. Any activities that you initiate for the selected objects stop at that point, leaving the objects in the different application unchanged.
Depending on how you have defined the scope of objects loaded into the mass change tool (see section Scope above), selecting object hierarchies can lead to a system behavior where the same object is shown multiple times in the object list. If you select such an object, the system marks it as selected at all places in the list where that object occurs. This is because each object can be seen as a self-contained entity and as part of other objects at the same time.
Uses Flag: Additional Information
The semantics of the Uses flag for objects shown in the mass change tool may not be obvious at first glance. Here is a description of the different states for this flag:
Status |
Description |
|---|---|
selected |
Indicates that all the subobjects of the top-level object (direct as well as indirect) are marked. Only objects from the same application as the top-level object are considered. This state requires that the system has all the needed information available. For example, this is not the case if the object tree has not been expanded after the mass change tool has been started. Note that this can even lead to situations where the same object is displayed more than once in the tree, where one occurrence has the Uses flag selected while another occurrence does not — depending on the expansion state of the tree.
For reasons of the BRFplus object architecture model, there is no practical way of providing the tool all the necessary information for a comprehensive marking indication at once. Due to the fact that the objects are internally organized in a network rather than in a hierarchy, there is a potentially unlimited number of bidirectional relationships between them. Therefore, there is no technical indication for the tool where to stop when following these relationships. This is why the system restricts the analysis of marked objects to those that have already been brought into the tool's focus by expanding certain tree branches. End of the note. |
not selected |
Indicates one of the following alternatives:
|
not specified |
Indicates that some of the subobjects are marked, but at least one of them is not. |
Note
Objects that cannot have any subobjects are always shown with Uses state not selected. This is true for element data objects.
You can decide whether the system shall display or hide the Uses column. To accomplish this, choose Other Actions Show/Hide Uses Column . This can be useful if your monitor
has a low screen resolution, and you want to gain space for the other columns.
Object Data
For each object loaded into the mass change tool, the system displays the most important administrative data in the list:
Name
Text
Type
Versioning Status
Access Level
If you need more information for a particular object to decide whether it shall be subject to a change or not, you can easily access the complete set of information for that object by clicking its name in the Object column. The system then presents you the same information for the object as you would see it in the workbench's work area when editing an object.
Change Buffer
Change Buffer and Undo Functionality
With the only exception of the check function, all activities that you can perform in the mass change tool imply a write access to the marked objects. To protect you from any inadvertent changes being written to the database, the system first writes the changes for each activity into a buffer area. After that, all the activity buttons are disabled except for the Save and Undo buttons. This gives you the opportunity to have a thorough look at the changed objects in the list and decide whether everything has been changed the way you wanted it. Then decide how you want to proceed:
If everything is OK, click Save.
If you find any unwanted changes, click Undo. This lets the system revert all marked objects to their previous state.
After having chosen either Save or Undo, the system reenables the activity buttons. The previously marked objects remain marked for possible further changes.
Note
The Undo function is not only available for undoing global changes that you have applied with the different activity buttons. Rather, it is also available for direct changes that you have manually applied to individual objects listed in the mass change tool (for example, changed texts). However, keep in mind that the Undo function can only operate on those items that are currently selected in the list.
Notification Concept
For each selected object that you want to change, the system first checks whether the desired change can be applied or not. If the system determines any problems that prevent the object from being changed, the system alerts you with a corresponding message. In addition, you find an icon in the Messages column that gives you a hint whether the change was successful or not.
Note
When you apply a change to a large number of objects, and if the desired change fails for many of them, this results in a long list of messages in the message area. In this situation, it can be difficult to find out which message refers to which object. To help you navigate between an object and the corresponding system message, you can click the symbol in the Message column of the object in question. This lets the system clear the message area and only display the message for the object in question. When you click the message symbol of any other object, the message area is updated accordingly.
Mass Change Activities
Check
With this function, you let the system perform a consistency check for all marked items. Once the check is done, the system presents all check messages in sequential order on top of the screen. In addition, for each item where the system has detected an issue, you find a small icon in the Messages column indicating what kind of problem has been detected for this particular item. This two-fold type of message output enables you to both detect recurring issues that apply to a bigger number of objects as well as object-specific issues.
Note
Checking objects is the only activity in the mass change tool where no write access to the marked items is implied. Consequently, the Save and Undo buttons are not needed after a check has been performed.
Activate
With this function, you activate all marked items. This is helpful because in the BRFplus workbench, you are normally not forced to activate an object. This can easily lead to a situation where you have created quite a number of inactive objects, which would be not much fun to activate manually. Here, the mass activation function comes in handy.
Note
Unlike activating a single object in the BRFplus workbench, the mass change tool does not support automatic activation of an object's subobjects. However, you can easily accomplish this by setting the Uses flag.
Mark as obsolete/Remove obsolete flag
With this function, you mark the marked items as obsolete. Objects marked as obsolete remain functional in the contexts where they are already in use, but cannot be used in combination with any new rule statements. You can also use the complementary function to remove the obsolescence flag from all marked objects again, so that these objects are available again for productive use.
Mark for deletion/Remove deletion flag
With this function, you mark the marked items for deletion. Objects marked for deletion remain functional in the contexts where they are already in use, but make it impossible to apply any changes to the referencing objects without replacing the reference. You can also use the complementary function to remove the deletion flag from all marked objects again, so that these objects are available again for productive use.
Delete
With this function, you delete the marked items. The affected objects are no longer available in BRFplus.
Caution
The Mark as Obsolete, Mark for Deletion, and Delete actions should be handled with care. For an in-depth insight into the implications of these actions, see Deleting Objects.
Set Access Level
With this function, you change the access level of all marked items. This is extremely helpful when you find yourself in a situation where it turns out that the access level of an entire BRFplus application must be changed. For example, this might happen due to changed security requirements or changes in the system landscape.
Set Versioning Status
With this function, you switch the versioning status of all marked items on or off. This can be helpful, for example, if you had versioning switched on for an application for testing reasons and are finally convinced that the application works as desired and needs no more version control. Or vice versa, due to changed legislation, you are forced to run a particular application under version control where this was not required in the past.
Rename
With this function, you can perform a simple renaming action for the marked items. The system prompts you to enter a prefix, a suffix, or both, to be added to the name of the marked items. Although this is a very simple action, it can still help you save a lot of time since changes to the technical name of an object is not considered an everyday task and is therefore secured by additional navigation steps in the workbench. In the mass change tool, you can simply bypass these security steps.
Note
BRFplus identifies its objects by their ID, not by name. Changing the technical name of an object is therefore uncritical within the scope of BRFplus. However, it is possible that an object is directly referenced by name from an ABAP backend program calling the BRFplus framework. It is up to you to ensure that all external name-based references to BRFplus objects are kept in sync with the changes made inside BRFplus.
Renaming does only affect the technical name of an object, not the short text or text. You can still change the text of the affected objects manually in the mass change tool. For the short text, however, any changes must be made in the workbench for each affected object.
Due to the logic of the renaming mechanism, the current name of the involved objects will always be kept as a part of the resulting name. There is no replacing of the original name with this function.
Copy
With this function, you can create a copy of the marked items, either in the current application or in a different application. This is a sophisticated function that offers you several different types of result, depending on the options you choose. For more information, see Copying Objects with the Mass Change Tool.
Export to XML
With this function, you can create an XML version of the marked items and export it into an external file. This function is based on the standard XML export function of BRFplus, with the additional option to put together a set of deliberate objects whose XML representation is contained in the same export file. This is helpful, for example, in situations where a number of objects have been corrupted in a remote system and you want to replace the corrupted objects by importing the original version via XML, without touching any of the other objects in the target system.