Using Namespaces for Developing BI Objects 

Use

To avoid naming conflicts with a customer’s local objects, customer content has to be developed in its own namespace. You can either use your own namespace or an agreed upon subarea of the standard customer namespace (A* to Z*):

1. Scenario: Your Own Namespace for Developing Customer Content

We recommend that you use your own namespace. Namespaces in the form /ABC are reserved for customer content development. To designate a BI object as having been developed in a namespace of this type, enter the technical name of the object together with the namespace.

For example, an InfoObject can have the technical name /ABC/MATERIAL.

For customers, using a special namespace for developing customer content is optional.

Partners have to develop their partner content in their own development namespace.

2. Scenario: Standard Namespace for Developing Customer Content

As a customer, you can also develop customer content in the standard customer namespace (A* to Z*). In this case, however, you have to make sure that the content objects and the recipient’s personal objects are located in different subareas of your namespace.

You can split your standard customer namespace so that, for example, A* to D* is reserved for customer content development and E* to Z* is reserved for the development of personal objects.

In the source system note that for the application component hierarchy, the default customer namespace Y* and Z* is available.

The rest of this topic further explains how you can set up and use your own namespace for developing customer content, as detailed in the first (recommended) scenario.

Prerequisites

To apply for namespaces, you require an ABAP development license (ABAP/4 Development Workbench License).

For more information about applying for a namespace, see SAP Note 84282. 

Procedure

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       1.      Apply for a development namespace in the Service Marketplace at service.sap.com/namespaces.

       2.      Apply for a generation namespace as well as a development namespace. You apply for this in the same way as you apply for the development namespace.

If you are using more than one development namespace, you require a generation namespace for each one.

The name of the generation namespace must correspond to the following rules:

○       The name can have a maximum of seven characters, including a slash ("/").

○       The name has to start with the letter “B” and then consist only of numbers.

/B2345/ or /B24/ 

○       The descriptive text starts with “BWGEN”. Finally, the namespace to which it is assigned is specified.

"BWGEN generation namespace for /ABC/ company ABC ...".

The shorter the name of the generation namespace, the more significant characters you have available for the technical name of the BI object.

       3.      Release the development namespace and the generation namespace in BI and the OLTP system (Use the same namespaces in both systems).

To do this, enter the namespace and the repair license in the namespace table in your development system. From the Transport Organizer Tools (transaction SE03), choose Administration →  Display/Change Namespaces. The Display View “Repository Namespaces ”: Overview screen appears. (In the OLTP system, path details may differ from release to release.)

Unlike the development namespace, you only enter the generation namespace with role C (customer). Therefore, you only need a repair license.

You can only create generated objects in the generation namespace. If you create your own, nongenerated objects in the generation namespace, there is a danger that these may be overwritten by objects generated in the BI system. For this reason, always use the development namespace for nongenerated objects.

       4.      Enter the namespace in your BI system.

You can edit BI namespaces in transaction Maintain BI Namespaces(transaction RSNSPACE). Since this transaction uses a transport connection, your entries are written to a request and can therefore be transported to a target system. The system writes partner and customer namespaces such as /ABC/ to the RSPSPACE table. The RSNSPACE table contains the BI standard namespaces such as /BI0/ and /BIC/.

In the OLTP system, set the namespaces to changeable. You make this setting in Transport Organizer Tools (transaction SE03) Administration  → Set System Change Option. The System Change Option screen appears. Here you can set the namespaces to modifiable. (In the OLTP system, path details may differ from release to release.)

       5.      When you use a namespace, you should create a package with the same namespace prefix (such as /ABC/PACK).

Result

You have created a development namespace and a generation namespace.

Note that the length of the names of BI objects that are located in these namespaces is restricted. The following table contains some examples. Prerequisite: These examples are based on the assumption that your development namespace has N characters and your generation namespace has G characters. (Note that the slashes count as well, for example namespace /ABC/ has five characters).

Maximum Length of Names of BI Objects

BI Object Type	Maximum Length According to Namespace
InfoObject	The maximum length corresponds to the smaller of either: 14 characters - G or 14 characters - N. If you are not using analysis authorizations (see Authorizations) but are using the reporting authorizations of the previous authorization concept, the following length restrictions also apply for authorization-relevant characteristics: With authorization-relevant characteristics /ABC/NAME, the field name for the authorization fields must not have more than 10 characters. If the field name of characteristic /B24/<NAME> is longer, you have to define a shorter authorization field name explicitly in InfoObject maintenance. For more information about the previous concept of reporting authorizations, see Previous Concept for Reporting Authorizations.
InfoCube	14 characters – G
DataStore object	13 characters – G
InfoSource	25 characters – G
InfoSet	14 characters – G
DataSource	30 characters – G

Note that existing BI objects cannot automatically be copied into the namespace. To put an existing object in the namespace, you have to create a new object in the namespace as a copy of the required object.

 

See also:

 

Features when Transporting Roles