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Career Break & Women in Technology - The Big Issue!

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:42:00 +0000

I've been asked a question from one of my Blog readers which I could not ignore. The question represents a bigger issue about the social responsibility of organizations and people, in general. Actually, this is not something that affects only women but also the families; you, me and the society . What exactly are we doing about it and is that enough?

It's not just about the Organizations or thought-leaders but everyone need to understand, encourage and provide opportunities for women who are looking forward to re-start their career after a necessary and justifiable break.

Recently, I found some articles and blogs about the discrimination women face in their career and what could be their response. Also, there have been a few complaints about little or no representation of women in technology conferences. Unfortunately, the main concern and the bigger issue is still left unattended.

There have been a few local initiatives like Women in Technologies, Tata Group's second career opportunity, and other such programmes by a few organizations but this is something that should be genuinely addressed by most organizations and in every part of the world.

Moving ahead with the question:

Ram, I come from an engineering background and have worked in the SAP ABAP field for almost 6 years, including overseas. I then took a 4 year break to look after my new-born child and now would like to re-enter the workforce, preferably in SAP. I did look into pursuing SAP ABAP certification, but it seems like I am not qualified for the same since I neither have recent work-exp; nor am I enrolled in any of the registered SAP training centers.

Any advice/tips on how to re-start my SAP ABAP career and get back into the workforce will be very much appreciated!
Thanks
[ name removed ]

First of all, My apologies for not being able to reply to many career related queries from my blog-readers. Blame it on my personal and professional commitments and also my inability to answer some of your questions. But this question, in particular, is part of a very important issue so I would like to post it on my Blog, hoping others in IT field will chip-in and try to find some answers or initiatives.

I am hoping that someone more capable will pick this and provide some further guidance and initiatives to tackle the bigger issue but here is some of my suggestion for this specific question:

Some of the suggestions in my old posts on SAP Career can still be relevant so please have a look.

Re-build and enhance your skills in your chosen area of technology:
Since you already have a lot of experience in ABAP programming, I don't think it would be very difficult to refresh your ABAP and general IT/Soft skills through self-learning. As you might be aware, SAP and ABAP is no longer only procedural and SAPGUI related programming language. I would suggest you buy a few good books on ABAP Objects, BSP, ABAP WebDynpro, Web Services and at least get some basic understanding of the new areas. If you don't have prior experience of web-development then a basic knowledge of Web technologies [ HTTP/HTML/CSS/XML etc. ] will be beneficial before moving ahead with SAP Web Development. I wrote about this earlier . You should be able to find a lot of information on web regarding basic web technologies. In short :

You must have a SAP Netweaver system to practice your programming skills, so I suggest you install SAP NetWeaver Developer Edition. You can download it from SDN.
Get some good SAP Programming Books. I've not read these but other consultants have given good reviews to the these books:

ABAP Objects by Horst Keller
Next Generation ABAP Development by Rich Heilman & Thomas Jung
If you already have one then ABAP/4 in 21 days is a nice book to understand the basics of the ABAP procedural programming, data types, DDIC , functions etc. It does not contain the advance and OO part but I would still recommend the book to a beginner.

Not to mention there are some nice blogs on SDN for the beginners in ABAP OO, ABAP WebDynpro, Web Services etc. Here is a link for one such blog series.ABAP Trial Version for Newbies :

Build your online and offline Network:

Discuss with your ex-colleagues and friends. Ask for assistance regarding your career and job-search.
Once you have done some ground work on your skills then update your CV and distribute to some major job sites and your personal connections.
Update your LinkedIn profile and connect with SAP and recruitment consultants as well SAP communities.
Get active on forums like SDN to learn and contribute. This will not only help you with your self-learning but also in building professional connection with others, who might be able to help you in your job-search.
You should also use twitter to connect with some of the smartest SAP consultants & Mentors who can guide you further. I particularly recommend to follow @jonerp , @marilynpratt and SAPMentors .

To my Blog Readers:
My response is more of a place-holder and any further suggestions/comments on this topic will be much appreciated. I've seen this issue very closely. Luckily, though it took some time but my wife got a job after the career break.

Infinite developers for the price of 3

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:09:00 +0000

Question : In a company XYZ Software International, one of the most senior and competent developers was given a task of building a new Team. For whatever reason or to keep the senior members aside for productive work, the manager sets a policy that the most recently recruited developer will conduct the subsequent interview. Assuming that a developer can ascertain only 60% of his own competency, how many developers should be recruited before the team will have an equivalent capability of 3 times the original developer. Consider the worst case scenario.

Solution : Never.
X + 0.6 X + 0.6^2 X + 0.6^3 X + ....till infinite = [ X / (1-0.6) ] = 2.5 X

ABAP RegEx met CSV and said 'I'll keep a Tab on you'

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:16:00 +0000

I wrote about XML processing in my previous posts:

As much as we like to use XML for data-exchange, there are still a lot of legacy(pre-XML) data files floating between the systems. CSV files are used for ages and there are already some functions available in ABAP for the purpose. But all these standard or custom methods of parsing CSV, require more than 10 lines of code.
[ Image and comic from XKCD ]

Arrival of RegEx [ Regular Expressions ] in ABAP should be able to put an end to the miseries, developers have been facing with string ( match/find/replace ) operations.

If you would like to start with simple code, see some examples here. Also, in my attempt to learn RegEx by examples, I tried to write a CSV parser in ABAP and the code-snippet for converting the CSV string-line is as below:

REPORT  z_ram_test_csv_to_itab_regex.

DATA : g_input TYPE string. "g_input(100) TYPE C.

g_input = '"F1",F2,""Hello",  "How" are "you"","F3"'.

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF
  REGEX ',(?=(?:[^"]*$)|(?:[^"]*"[^"]*"[^"]*)*$)'
  IN g_input WITH ';'.

REPLACE FIRST OCCURRENCE OF
  REGEX '^"'
  IN g_input WITH ' '.

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF
  REGEX '";"|";|;"'
  IN g_input WITH ';'.

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF '""' IN g_input
  WITH '"'.    "Added during testing

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF REGEX '"$' IN g_input
  WITH ' '.

WRITE :/ g_input.

"Now you can use SPLIT on ';' to get the values in itab

To keep it simple for the explanation, I replaced comma ( , ) in CSV with ( ; ). However, Tab ( cl_abap_char_utilities=>HORIZONTAL_TAB ) should be used for productive code. I've not done complete testing of this code so can't be sure if it complies with all the CSV specifications. But in case you managed to test this code then please pass on your feedback as comments. And please do test this before using it for production purpose. Test cases can be adapted from the Wiki examples.

Some developers simply split the string on comma, without realising that there can be a comma within one of the text-fields. If not handled carefully, this could be really dangerous and potentially corrupt the database. Till your custom code is properly tested, or if you have an old SAP release, you should stick with the sap standard functions for parsing data. e.g. Function KCD_CSV_FILE_TO_INTERN_CONVERT or a custom adaptation of the same function.

OK so I don't understand much of this code either ;) . But I am still trying. The main part, the first RegEx, was gratefully received and adapted [ in other words copied and pasted :) ] from this article on 'Mastering regular expressions in PHP'.

Listing 4. Look-ahead example
                
$tab_data = preg_replace( '/
    ,                               # look for a comma
    (?=                             # then look ahead for
        (?:[^"]*$)                  # a string with no quotes and eol
        |                           #  -or-
        (?:[^"]*"[^"]*"[^"]*)*$     # a string with balanced quotes
    )                               # 
    /x', "\t", $csv_data );

Though the first RegEx is the main part of the code, I spent quite some time on the 4th one as well:

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF REGEX '"$' IN g_input
  WITH ' '.

It's so simple: Find the quote ( " ) at the end of String ( $ ).
But I could not make it work, at first. I also checked with the Program DEMO_REGEX_TOY and could not find any problem with RegEx. Can you guess the problem? The hint is very clear in the code.

Later I realised that $ will not find the end of line, if input is declared as char [e.g. g_input(100) type C ] and not as a String.

I like writing about technical topics not that I don't have my own thoughts, ideas and philosophies on non-technical subjects. Good thing about technical topics is that you can be right or wrong or just plain absurd but there is little chance of being politically incorrect. Also when it comes to non-technical topics, it's rather difficult to put your ideas, thoughts into words without being misinterpreted. That's the reason why I respect people who managed to do that reasonably well.

I would like to point you towards a Blog post by Thorsten Franz "Speaking about information gathering, preaching about collaboration". Though I reserve my view on these topics and my decision to express or not, I found that interesting and thought-provoking.

In my view, we should try to pursue the intersection of 'What we love doing' and 'Something that we are really good at'. [ Of course it should be legal and ethical, that goes without saying ]. Though it won’t hurt if you could improve on other aspects, we should try to identify and utilise the potential of our 'Core Competency'. I hear you say...Management Jargon...cut the crap.

As I mentioned 'Core Competency', that reminds me of my 'SOCIALVIBE' widget. I recently tried 'SOCIALVIBE' widget to support a charity. Well, if I can utilise my Blog's potential to generate some money for a charity then there is no harm, right? And that's acceptable even as per Ayn Rand's philosophy. Not that I am seeking approval.

However, I realised there is hardly much potential there. I get around 100 visits/day on this Blog but it could not generate even 1 hour of schooling for the children in past two weeks. Not sure if it's due to lack of potential in my Blog though.

I would suggest that the charity should take care of their core area and leave the revenue generation through online ads on someone who is good at that. Compared to Google Adsense which is based on keywords, 'SOCIALVIBE' widget's ads does not appeal or add value to the target audience. Basically, I will have to remove this 'SOCIALVIBE' widget because it does not work.

There are several areas around Charity that should be run like a Business. A quote from Shai Agassi's blog:

My reaction was that Bill Gates changed the rules of the game, when he decided to move into philanthropy and now all the silicon valley geeks found themselves in a new race. The race was defined by not who can give the most, rather by who can generate the biggest impact per buck spent.

By the way, If you’ve not read before then some of these books, I think, can help in developing a balanced perspective: Atlas Shrugged & Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.

Back to the topic of this Blog; while writing this post, I thought of clearing some of my earlier assumptions. So here is that quick adaptations using tab instead of ';'.

REPORT  z_ram_test_csv_to_tab_regex.

DATA : g_input TYPE string.
DATA : l_tab TYPE c value cl_abap_char_utilities=>HORIZONTAL_TAB.
DATA : l_regex type string.

g_input = '"F1",F2,""Hello",  "How" are "you"","F3"'.

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF
  REGEX ',(?=(?:[^"]*$)|(?:[^"]*"[^"]*"[^"]*)*$)'
  IN g_input WITH l_tab.

REPLACE FIRST OCCURRENCE OF
  REGEX '^"'
  IN g_input WITH ' '.

CONCATENATE '"' l_tab '"|"' l_tab '|' l_tab '"' into l_regex.
REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF
  REGEX l_regex                         "    '"l_tab"|"l_tab|l_tab"'
  IN g_input WITH l_tab.

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF '""' IN g_input
  WITH '"'.    "Added during testing

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF REGEX '"$' IN g_input
  WITH ' '.

WRITE :/ g_input.

Now let's test it with some examples from Wiki. Here # represents a tab display.

Input : 1997,Ford,E350
Output : 1997#Ford#E350

Input : 1997,Ford,E350,"Super, luxurious truck"
Output : 1997#Ford#E350#Super, luxurious truck

Input : 1997,Ford,E350,"Super ""luxurious"" truck"
Output : 1997#Ford#E350#Super "luxurious" truck
- This test actually failed with the original code. Added the line below :
REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF '""' IN g_input
WITH '"'.

Input : 1997,Ford,E350," Super luxurious truck "
Output : 1997#Ford#E350# Super luxurious truck

Input : "1997","Ford","E350"
Output : 1997#Ford#E350

Looking back at the code, I think we can minimise the number of lines by merging some of the Replace Regex operations. May be later.

Writing Thought-Provoking (Erroneous) Code

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:42:00 +0000

Do we learn from our mistakes? Probably not!.According to a research carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology we learn more from our successes than our failures. Except that the research was carried out on Monkeys. Not sure if Monkeys analyse their mistakes as much as we, humans, do. At least programmers do analyse coding mistakes which in turn provokes thoughts and improve their understanding.

I was working on a quick prototype to manipulate the help-values for the status of CRM activities. I wrote following code and encountered an error message stating relation ' ' is still not supported.

In SAP CRM Programming, we use relations of main 'Root/Access' objects to get other objects. For example, if you have 'BTAdminH' object instance available in your program then you can use the code such as one below to get 'BTHeaderActivityExt' instance.

lr_activity_entity ?= lr_adminh_entity->get_related_entity( iv_relation_name = 'BTHeaderActivityExt' ).

I checked the BOL hierarchy and at first could not see the cause of this error. However, it did not take much time to realize the problem due to case-sensitive nature of relationship name. Relation name 'BTHeaderActivityExt' was written as ''BTHeaderActivityEXT' in code.

In this case, the error message was not on the spot however it did give me a hint. For the Program/framework, the same relationship name but in different case does not make much sense therefore same error occurs as if the relationship does not exist at all.

Case-sensitivity is an issue because it results in loss of productivity. Though experienced developers can quickly analyse and correct these mistakes, beginners spend a lot of time solving problems related to case-sensitivity. The error messages are not very helpful either.

Another example where ABAP developers normally get problems due to case-sensitivity is ALV catalogue preparation. If you append a Field-Name in lower case, a run-time error occurs with message GETWA_NOT_ASSIGNED [ Fieldsymbol has not yet been assigned ].As a rule of thumb, you should be cautious about case-sensitivity, whenever you are writing something within the single quotes ' ' (char/string literals) in ABAP code.

There are quite a few areas in SAP where consultants waste time due to case-sensitivity like searching for a program, transaction or table based on its description. Another important transaction(search) where case-sensitivity should have been avoided by SAP is 'OTR Text Maintenance' [ Transaction SOTR_EDIT ].

Unlike some other languages, luckily ABAP code and identifiers such as variables, method, function or routine names etc. are case-insensitive. However, a few problems are still encountered due to case sensitivity built within a particular utility or framework.

Why can't the language/framework, itself, take care of case-sensitivity? Performance and complexity are the main reasons to keep the framework case-sensitive. So from the example, what changes may be required to make the BOL model case-insensitive without causing much performance issue?

Keep the relationship name as all uppercase in database and then compare after converting the string to upper case. The downside is that names can be unreadable and also lead to funny pronunciation. But that’s how we normally name table fields etc (and underscore char as separator within names – though it adds an extra character each time).
Use a redundant field as explained below.

In some cases, like short-texts or descriptions, it's important to keep the information 'as entered'. In that case, if you want selection or value help (F4) to work irrespective of upper or lower case text criteria then you may need another (redundant) field in database table, which is all uppercase representation of the same information. The redundancy is required to get the database selection working irrespective of the text-case entered in the selection criteria. This does add to extra memory requirement. Further, an index might be required as well for this field which may increase the burden on database.

You might be thinking that a redundant field may not be required, had there been a statement available in ABAP’s open SQL, like the one below:

SELECT ..
FROM ..
WHERE UPPER(column) like ‘%upper_string%’.

Within WHERE condition, UPPER(column) is possible in the vendor specific SQLs like Oracle or MSSQL. But this statement is unavailable in ABAP’s open SQL. Actually it’s not a big loss as such because this statement will cause major performance issue since table/index scan is the only possibility rather than index-seek.

After amending the code,while still thinking about case-sensitivity, I encountered another run-time error CONVT_NO_NUMBER at the following line in the code.

DELETE gt_ddlb FROM wa_ddlb.

You will probably notice immediately that I've missed the TABLE keyword and it should have been

DELETE TABLE gt_ddlb FROM wa_ddlb.

But why didn't I get the syntax error rather than run time error. And why the run time error is complaining about wa_ddlb being a character for which number conversion is not possible. As you can figure out, this is a valid statement variant and here value specified after FROM is the index value from where all lines will be deleted.

DELETE itab FROM index_value.

The statement variant expected wa_ddlb to be of type integer (like index) hence the run time error. Also, if you miss the TABLE addition, there could be a case, where you may not get the runtime error though the functionality may not be the one you intended.

Reference Code:

DATA:   lr_cuco                TYPE REF TO CL_ICCMP_BT_CUCOADMINH_IMPL,
        lr_entity              TYPE REF TO cl_crm_bol_entity,
        lv_process_type        TYPE crmt_process_type,
        lv_category            TYPE CRMT_ACTIVITY_CATEGORY,
        wa_ddlb                like line of gt_ddlb.

 lr_cuco ?= gr_outer->gr_cuco.
 gt_ddlb = lr_cuco->get_status_ddlb( ).

* First get the current entity using avialble instance 
*(in this case of class CL_ICCMP_BT_CUCOADMINH_IMPL)

 lr_entity ?= lr_cuco->typed_context->BTAdminH->collection_wrapper->get_current( ).

 if lr_entity is not bound.
   return.
 endif.

* Now that you have base entity (BTAdminH) , 
* get the required related instance for 'BTHeaderActivityExt'.
 lr_entity ?= lr_entity->get_related_entity( iv_relation_name = 'BTHeaderActivityEXT' ).

 if lr_entity is not bound.
   return.
 endif.

 lr_entity->get_property_as_value(  EXPORTING iv_attr_name = 'CATEGORY'
                                    IMPORTING ev_result    = lv_category ).

 if lv_category is initial.
   return.
 endif.

 if lv_category eq 'ABC'. 
* Delete Open option from drop-down.
  READ TABLE gt_ddlb into wa_ddlb with key key = 'E0001'.
  if sy-subrc eq 0.
    delete gt_ddlb from wa_ddlb.
*   Should be     delete TABLE gt_ddlb from wa_ddlb.
  endif.
  
 endif.

On a related incident, if you are getting 'No vendor specified' message from many SAP standard transactions or custom programs, in your recently upgraded ECC6.0 system then change the message number 001 of standard message class 00 in transaction SE91. The problem is only for a few patch levels and I could not find any OSS Note regarding generic correction. However, I did find a few OSS Notes acknowledging the problem locally in a few programs. These notes only provide a local solution, by changing the message statement variant to use explicit message class [ which is incorrect/incomplete solution ].

A generic message statement variant is used in some of the transactions, which always use default message class '00' and message number '001'. However, for some specific patch levels, the message is incorrectly hard-coded as 'No vendor specified' in place of &1&2&3&4&5&6..[ check in other system ].

MESSAGE message_text TYPE message_type.

This variant of message statement calls, class CL_MESSAGE_HELPER method SET_MSG_VARS_FOR_CLIKE .

Sometimes the error messages are misleading in our context. But from the context of the program, the message stands correct and specific. As a developer, think about all the possible causes, which may have different meaning for us but same for the program and program is complaining about one of those causes.

Beneath Abstraction!

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:13:00 +0000

Image from Free Stock Photos

Problems cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. - Albert Einstein

I was trying to find this famous quote from Einstein and realized that like software, it's actually available in many versions. I could not be sure about the original so in the end just chose one of the shortest.

Sometimes the obvious solutions are unable to solve the underlying problems, because from our level of understanding, we could only see the symptoms and not the cause. Just as an example, Socialism and Communism seem to be a very obvious solution to solve the poverty issue. "Collect money from those who have plenty and distribute among others who don't" - seems to be an obvious solution. However, we could all agree, it does not work as expected.

Basically, I am trying to relate this whole stuff of "level", "abstraction" & "consciousness" etc. with "how should we go about understanding basic software concepts and solve software problems".

Advent of powerful tools, IDEs, libraries and in general this "with a click of mouse" wizards, have made software developer and administrator's life much easier than before. In fact, learning new technology and developing applications has become easier than before, even for the beginners. However, the downside is that most of the developers no longer understand the basic concepts hiding behind the layers of abstraction. This lack of understanding does affect their confidence, while designing or programming, but the problem is more obvious during troubleshooting.

The order of learning may not be important here. e.g. you can first learn about a code generator wizard/IDE and then dig deeper in the layers underneath or learn the basics without using any code generator and then relate it with the generated code.

For example: if you never had an exposure to web related programming, it's better to understand the basics before jumping the gun. There is nothing that will stop anyone from learning ABAP BSPs / WebDynpros / JSPs / Web Services etc., directly. However, you should understand that these are another layers over the basic concepts like : HTML, XML, CSS, core language (e.g. ABAP / Java ) in relation with protocols like HTTP / SOAP. So it's important to understand the underlying concepts first.

What is HTTP Protocol and how can you enhance your understanding by avoiding the abstraction layers?

From Wikipidea : HTTP is a request/response standard of a client and a server. A client is the end-user(software program), the server is the web site. The client making a HTTP request—using a web browser, spider, or other end-user tool—is referred to as the user agent. The responding server—which stores or creates resources such as HTML files and images—is called the origin server. In between the user agent and origin server may be several intermediaries, such as proxies, gateways, and tunnels.

Working with the command prompt is a better way to understand the basic concepts. You can try to emulate a basic web-browser (request/response) from the command prompt using telnet.
e.g. to request the first page of Google search html page:

Start command prompt on your PC using Start->Run -> cmd

telnet www.google.co.uk 80 [ This is the command to use telnet connection with google at port 80 (web server port)] - press enter

GET http://www.google.co.uk/ [ This will use the HTTP GET to fetch the default page from google. similarly you can specify any URL on google.co.uk site ] - press enter

You can see the raw html code as Response from Google web server.

This is to understand the basic browser functionality and how it works. Also, if you are calling a web URL using methods of ABAP Class CL_HTTP_CLIENT then just remember that this class is an abstraction and provides similar functionality as a Browser. And similar to Browser settings, you may need to provide your corporate proxy server information to get this working.
A quick adaptation of the standard SAP example program, for getting the first page from www.google.co.uk is as below:

REPORT  Z_RAM_HTTP_CLIENT.

* data declarations
data: client type ref to if_http_client.
data: host type string value 'www.google.co.uk',
      service type string value '80',
      path type string value '/',
      errortext type string, "used for error handling.
      TIMEOUT   type i,
      subrc     like sy-subrc.

call method cl_http_client=>create
  EXPORTING
    host               = host                    "e.g. www.google.co.uk
    service            = service                 "port 80
    proxy_host         = 'proxy.company.com'     "proxy server
    proxy_service      = '80'
    scheme             = '1'                     "HTTP = 1
  IMPORTING
    client             = client
  EXCEPTIONS
    argument_not_found = 1
    internal_error     = 2
    plugin_not_active  = 3
    others             = 4.

if sy-subrc <> 0.
  write: / 'Client Create failed, subrc = ', sy-subrc.
  exit.
endif.

* set http method GET
call method client->request->set_method(
  if_http_request=>co_request_method_get ).
* set protocol version
client->request->set_version(
     if_http_request=>co_protocol_version_1_0 ).  "protocol = 'HTTP/1.0'.

* set request uri (/[?])
cl_http_utility=>set_request_uri( request = client->request
                               uri     = path ).

* Send
call method client->send
  EXPORTING
    timeout                    = timeout
  EXCEPTIONS
    http_communication_failure = 1
    http_invalid_state         = 2
    http_processing_failed     = 3
    others                     = 4.
if sy-subrc <> 0.
  call method client->get_last_error
    IMPORTING
      code    = subrc
      message = errortext.
  write: / 'communication_error( send )',
         / 'code: ', subrc, 'message: ', errortext.
  exit.
endif.

* receive
call method client->receive
  EXCEPTIONS
    http_communication_failure = 1
    http_invalid_state         = 2
    http_processing_failed     = 3
    others                     = 4.
if sy-subrc <> 0.
  call method client->get_last_error
    IMPORTING
      code    = subrc
      message = errortext.
  write: / 'communication_error( receive )',
         / 'code: ', subrc, 'message: ', errortext.
  exit.
endif.


* Write data
data: data type string.
data: fields type tihttpnvp,
      fields_wa type ihttpnvp.

call method client->response->get_header_fields
  CHANGING
    fields = fields.
loop at fields into fields_wa.
  write: / 'header_name', fields_wa-name,
           'header_value', fields_wa-value.
endloop.
data = client->response->get_cdata(  ).
data: line(72) type c,
      len type i,
      llen type i.
len = strlen( data ).

while len > 0.
  line  = data+llen(*).
  write: / line.
  len = len - 72.
  llen = llen + 72.
endwhile.
if llen < len.
  line  = data+llen(*).
  write: / line.
endif.

* close
call method client->close
  EXCEPTIONS
    http_invalid_state = 1
    others             = 2.

Further, if you want to understand underlying concepts behind consuming web services ( SOAP over HTTP ) in ABAP then read this excellent Blog Consuming Web Service from ABAP by Durairaj Athavan Raja. This Blog was written by Raja when web service wizard was not available for that release. Even today, this Blog can be used to avoid the wizards and understand the underlying operations of SOAP over HTTP in ABAP.
I am tempted to provide corresponding example from the web service wizard but will try later.

Also, another area I wanted to touch :

Importance of knowing basics like HTML, XML, CSS etc. and how it adds to your understanding while learning dynamic web page generators like BSPs etc. Mainly about BSP/HTMLB extensions and how these extensions generate underlying HTML codes.
For example: HTMLB extension to generate HTML code for a 'Button' is contained in methods DO_AT_BEGINNING, DO_AT_END & RENDER_DEFAULT_START of class CL_HTMLB_BUTTON. Check these methods to have an idea about how different browsers or design type selection (e.g. Classic, Design2002 or Design2003) affect the code generation.

Just to clarify, the suggestion here is to avoid layers, wizards etc. while you are trying to learn the basics. However, use of standard libraries, IDEs and Wizards is recommended for writing productive software as it ensures better productivity, standards, harmony and best practices.

Recommended Reads on related topic:

Don't Reinvent The Wheel, Unless You Plan on Learning More About Wheels By Jeff Atwood

The Law of Leaky Abstractions By Joel Spolsky

Your feedback is appreciated. However, if you have any technical query on related concepts, please ask your questions in SDN Forums or learn more through SAP Help and Google.

Generate Simple Transformation for XML in ABAP - Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:28:00 +0000

Just wanted to quickly add some more information to my last post on the same topic "Discovering a Hidden Gem :Generate Simple Transformation for XML in ABAP"

In this example, I will show how to use "Edit Simple Transformation Graphically" feature of XSLT_TOOL to generate simple transformations for XML elements having attributes.

Let's say there is a requirement to generate XML document from the ABAP data/ internal tables. And the resultant XML document should have the following structure. Basically, POST_CODE should be an attribute of "Town" element.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<NewDataset>
   <Table>
     <Town POST_CODE="B5">BIRMINGHAM</Town>
      <County>WARWICK</County>
</Table>
<Table>
      <Town POST_CODE="NP20">NEWPORT</Town>
      <County>WALES</County>
</Table>
</NewDataset>

Initial steps are similar to the example in my last post [ so I've just copied the screen shots from there ]

Create Table Type ZNEWDATASET in transaction SE11. The hierarchy structure should be compatible with the XML hierarchy.
Now create the ST program in transaction XSLT_TOOL. Spot the magic stick in the editor menu.
Click on 'Edit Simple Transformation Graphically' button (magic stick) and you will get the editor as below. Create a new root (right click - context menu ) in "Data Roots" section. I've named it NEWDATASET but the important thing is to enter the correct type, created earlier.
Now you can see the data root hierarchy as below. Drag and Drop the NEWDATASET root on right panel ( Simple Transfromation ). It automaically generates the ST nodes corresponding to the ABAP structure. However, you need to adjust the names as per the XML element names.
Now adjust the names in ST panel as per actual XML element names. Delete the PostCode element as we need this as an attribute of Town, rather than an element.
Important thing to remember: Always use 'SAVE' before adding , deleting or modifying nodes. Otherwise you will face errors during node operations.
Select node "Town", and then click on "First Child" button at the top toolbar. Further, use right click to get the conext menu for "Town" element and create a new attribute 'POST_CODE". Now drag the POST_CODE from left panel (data) to right panel on the POST_CODE attribute to create association. The index numbers shows the association between data nodes and xml nodes.

Save and Activate. The ST program (Z_RAM_TEST_ATTR1), generated by the utility, is as below:

<?sap.transform simple?>
<tt:transform xmlns:tt="http://www.sap.com/transformation-templates" xmlns:ddic="http://www.sap.com/abapxml/types/dictionary" xmlns:def="http://www.sap.com/abapxml/types/defined">
    <tt:root name="NEWDATASET" type="ddic:ZNEWDATASET"/>
        <tt:template>
              <NewDataSet>
                    <tt:loop ref=".NEWDATASET">
                          <Table>
                                     <Town>

                                                     <tt:attribute name="POST_CODE" value-ref="$REF.POST_CODE"/>
                                                      <tt:value ref="TOWN"/>
                                               </Town>

                                     <County tt:value-ref="COUNTY"/>
                          </Table>
                    </tt:loop>
               </NewDataSet>
         </tt:template>
</tt:transform>

Example ABAP code to call the transformation is as below:

REPORT  z_ram_abap_to_xml.

DATA : lt_source TYPE znewdataset,
       wa_source LIKE LINE OF lt_source,
       xml_result TYPE xstring.  "xstring ensures UTF-8 encoding

wa_source-town = 'BIRMINGHAM'.
wa_source-county = 'WARWICK'.
wa_source-post_code = 'B5'.
APPEND wa_source TO lt_source.

wa_source-town = 'NEWPORT'.
wa_source-county = 'WALES'.
wa_source-post_code = 'NP20'.
APPEND wa_source TO lt_source.

CALL TRANSFORMATION z_ram_test_attr1
  SOURCE newdataset = lt_source[]
  RESULT XML  xml_result  .

CALL FUNCTION 'SCOL_TRACE_SHOW_XML'
  EXPORTING
    xdoc = xml_result.

In case you want help on how to download the XML documents etc, please check the standard example transaction SSTDEMO1

To SAP with Love: Focus on University Alliance than SAP Certifications

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Please SAP, Focus on improving the University & Corporate Alliance Program. You will get your chance to certify them later. Think about Future.

Like any other checks, SAP Certifications can be useful but it is not a necessary or sufficient measure to judge the ability of an SAP Consultant. Anyone serious about solving the issue should focus on the root cause of the problem. My advice to someone who thinks SAP Certification, by itself, is the magic solution to the problem of failed SAP projects. With due respect, now please get back to earth. And welcome home, just in case.

A lot of digital ink ( and sound waves as well ) have been well spent on SAP Certification discussion and if you are feeling left behind then check this one by Dennis Howlett to start with.

In general, I've summarized the way different sectors of SAP ecohub value SAP Certifications:

1. SAP Aspirants: SAP Certifications is their only quick and possible hope of getting into a relatively lucrative career. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a false hope, in most of the cases.

2. SAP Buyers / Deal Makers / Management / Sales : In absence of any other quick measure to filter good consultants from bad ones they fall back on SAP Certifications as a measure of talent, knowledge & skill.
Consultancies and Sales guys are aware of the SAP Buyers' infatuations towards 'Number of certified SAP consultants' so they use it for their advantage, whenever possible.

3. Experienced and competent consultants: Most of them don't give a damn about SAP Certifications. In reality, if they interview a candidate, who is emphasizing on his SAP certifications more than his previous work and experience, then it's a negative sign.

Why do I think that SAP Certification is not an effective solution compared to University / Corporate Alliance? [ Actually, it's not even as good as filtering through normal interview selection ]

Because knowledge of syntaxes, semantics, few basic configuration scenarios, master / transaction data, is not enough , unless you have the TALENT, SKILL & EXPERIENCE to apply that knowledge in resolving real Business/IT problems. Surely I must have left a few other important attributes for success but then I am not an expert.

I believe good universities/colleges have a better framework to attract talent and judge them through a long term process of examination compared to SAP Certifications. No offence meant to anyone who has just graduated and went for SAP Certifications but I've seen a disturbing trend in some parts of the world.

SAP Certifications are perceived as costlier but relatively easier way of getting into IT. Most of the fresh graduates, who could not qualify to the generic aptitude tests of IT companies and other qualification criteria, resort to SAP certifications. Much to their disappointment later. In a sense SAP Certification is not capable of attracting or filtering right talent.

In its current form, SAP Certifications are merely a check of your knowledge gained through a few days of SAP Training. It does not add much value to the skills or experience. It's not even an aptitude test. University and corporate alliance programs can surely help in enhancing your skill and provide some basic experience through corporate internships.

Further, it's important to have right academic / industry qualifications depending on the specific area of SAP. Also, experience as a business user in the related field should be considered valuable for a career in SAP Functional area.

There are always some exceptions to the rule but who cares about exceptions.

WHEN OTHERS " Probably a genius but deprived because of this university framework
* Do Nothing , they will find their way.

Enough on certifcations. I will be back with a post on the XML ABAP transformation tool soon.

Disclaimer: I am also one of the non-certified SAP consultants. Luckily ( or whatever ), I got a chance to work with SAP Projects from the begining of my career. Basically, I am still learning it for the past 11 years.

The 8th Habit of a Programmer !

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:52:00 +0000

Oh don't go on the title of this post. I am just trying to read this book called 'The 8th Habit' but my daughter won't approve. It seems only one person, who is allowed to read a book in my house, is my 2 years old daughter. Never mind.

There was an interesting post by Jeff Atwood, Don't Reinvent The Wheel, Unless You Plan on Learning More About Wheels. I won't go that far to expect programmers will rewrite the libraries and use it in live projects. But sometime a programmer should think about how the wheel was invented, at first place.

Interestingly, one of my favourite questions, which I ask during technical interviews and mainly to the junior developers:

Assume a particular programming language statement/Function does not exist as yet. Now explain how would you go about building a logic to replace the original statement / Function.

e.g. What if SAP has not provided a SORT statement for the internal tables? or
You need to print the amount in words and let's assume there is no function [ SPELL_AMOUNT ] available in SAP.

I don’t expect them to explain exactly the way it should be, neither do I know it by myself. But their approach to answer this question does help in identifying the real programmers.

How does a candidate react to these type of questions, is also very revealing. The programmers, who really like programming - logic, analysis etc. - they are pleasantly surprised. And those who are wrongly in this profession, will have a completely different reaction. They try to argue to prove it's an unnecessary question. They don't get the motive behind these questions.

If spelling the amount seems to be too difficult then try with a coffee corner question. I like reading threads in the coffee corner at SDN and there was a funny question by Amit Khare.

WHO IS YOUR ROLE MODEL ?

Try it without looking at the answers.

1) Pick your favorite number between 1-9
2) Then Multiply by 3
3) Add 3, then again Multiply by 3
4) You'll get a 2 or 3 digit number.... right?
5) Add the digits together.
Example: if your number is 34, 3+4 so that your number is 7

Now with that number see who your ROLE MODEL is from the list below :

1. Mother Teresa
2. Nelson Mandela
3. Your mother
4. Your father
5. Bill Gates
6. Gandhi
7. Brad Pitt
8. Hitler
9. Amit Khare
10. Barack Obama

Well it does not take much of the available common sense to realize that you'll always get Amit Khare as your role model, in case you decided to calculate.

However, if you are a programmer, you may immediately get the urge to solve the logic (or maths) behind the equation, even if it's trivial.

Let's say the number that you choose ( between 1 to 9 ) is X.
Then the calculated number will be : 3(3X+3) = 9X+9 = (10X -X) + 9 = 10X + (9-X)
Basically, the idea is to arrange this in the form of (10*X + Y ) to represent any two digit number.
e.g. 24 =10*2 + 4

So the final number is 10X + (9-X) and that means the first digit of the number is X and 2nd digit has value (9-X). So the addition of the digits = X + (9-X) = 9.
Basically, you will always get 9 for this calculation, irrespective of your chosen number.

Well that does not require much of your logical skills.. so what about this? Write a program, which will generate these kind of questions, in favor of any of the selected role models :) . Have fun !!

Discovering a Hidden Gem :Generate Simple Transformation for XML in ABAP

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:52:00 +0000

Even in its most nascent form, this less known wizard of simple transformation, could be really useful for ABAP developers. I think, ABAP developers would love to have a graphical utility to generate simple transformation/XSLT code.

Almost a year back, I was writing some happy-code to consume an external web service from ABAP. As the web service was returning the result data in the form of an XML string, I ended up writing a Simple Transformation to get the values in ABAP internal table.

Consuming webservice from ABAP is not the topic of this post but if you need help on this then please check the blogs on SDN. However, If you need to post an answer on a twitter-interview ( similar to a telephonic interview but held on twitter ) then there you go :
Xn SE80->Repository Browser->Enterprise Services->[ right click to bring the context menu ] -->Create Proxy [ use WSDL URL e.g. http://www.webservicex.net/uklocation.asmx?WSDL to generate proxy through wizard ]. Xn LPCONFIG to configure the logical port.

Back to the topic, I spotted this magic-stick in Simple Transformation editor [ Transaction XSLT_TOOL ] and tried to make it work. But could not decipher and wrote the ST manually, instead. Interestingly, I could not find any information about this so called "Edit Simple Transformation Graphically" feature. In my defence, I searched on SAP OSS, SAP Help & SDN. There you go ...Well search feature on SAP Sites.. is great anyway ;)

A year later, I just happened to be adoring ( developers do this often ) my old code and it reminded me of this utility. I tried figuring out once again and managed to discover something worth sharing.

Service proxy call provides data in the form of XML result. Code for proxy call is as below:

CREATE OBJECT LO_UK_LOCATION.
TRY.
lv_input-POST_CODE = p_post.

CALL METHOD LO_UK_LOCATION->GET_UKLOCATION_BY_POST_CODE
  EXPORTING
    INPUT  = lv_input
  IMPORTING
    OUTPUT = lv_output.

 CATCH CX_AI_SYSTEM_FAULT .
   WRITE : 'CX_AI_SYSTEM_FAULT'.
 CATCH CX_AI_APPLICATION_FAULT .
   WRITE : 'CX_AI_APPLICATION_FAULT'.
ENDTRY.

Now the result variable lv_output will be having the data in the form of an XML string as below.
Tip: You can use a function module SCOL_TRACE_SHOW_XML to show the XML data on screen.

<NewDataSet>
                   <Table>
                              <Town>Balthangie</Town>
                              <County>Aberdeenshire</County>
                              <PostCode>AB53</PostCode>
                     </Table>
                     <Table>
                              <Town>Bankhead</Town>
                              <County>Aberdeenshire</County>
                              <PostCode>AB51</PostCode>
                     </Table>
</NewDataSet>

In order to transform the XML to ABAP internal table, I decided to use Simple Transformation. Now I will generate the simple transformation as below:

Create Table Type ZNEWDATASET in transaction SE11. The hierarchy structure should be compatible with the XML hierarchy.
Now create the ST program in transaction XSLT_TOOL. Spot the magic stick in the editor menu.
Click on 'Edit Simple Transformation Graphically' button (magic stick) and you will get the editor as below. Create a new root (right click - context menu ) in "Data Roots" section. I've named it NEWDATASET but the important thing is to enter the correct type, created earlier.
Now you can see the data root hierarchy as below. Drag and Drop the NEWDATASET root on right panel ( Simple Transfromation ). It automaically generates the ST nodes corresponding to the ABAP structure. However, you need to adjust the names as per the XML element names.
Now adjust the names in ST panel as per actual XML element names.
Save and Activate. The ST program (Z_TEST), generated by the utility, is as below:

<?sap.transform simple?>
<tt:transform xmlns:tt="http://www.sap.com/transformation-templates" xmlns:ddic="http://www.sap.com/abapxml/types/dictionary" xmlns:def="http://www.sap.com/abapxml/types/defined">
    <tt:root name="NEWDATASET" type="ddic:ZNEWDATASET"/>
        <tt:template>
              <NewDataSet>
                    <tt:loop ref=".NEWDATASET">
                          <Table>
                                     <Town tt:value-ref="TOWN"/>
                                     <County tt:value-ref="COUNTY"/>
                                    <PostCode tt:value-ref="POST_CODE"/>
                          </Table>
                    </tt:loop>
               </NewDataSet>
         </tt:template>
</tt:transform>

Now use the code below to get data into ABAP internal table.

data : result type ZNEWDATASET, "itab of table type ZNEWDATASET
       wa_result like line of result.

        call transformation Z_TEST 
          source xml lv_output-GET_UKLOCATION_BY_POST_CODE_R
          result     newdataset = result[].

LOOP AT result into wa_result.
  WRITE :/ wa_result-TOWN, wa_result-COUNTY, wa_result-POST_CODE.
ENDLOOP.

It seems to be a very useful utility. I hope this will be further enhanced by SAP or the SAP Community.
By the way, I checked this on SAP ECC6.0. I will try to explore further for complex XML e.g. elements having attributes.

Please do add your inputs, if you managed to check this out or have done this before.

Updated:
SAP Help document for ST is at http://help.sap.com/abapdocu/en/ABENABAP_XML.htm

* It's better to Display XML from ABAP as below :
cl_abap_browser=>show_xml( EXPORTING xml_string = xml_string ).

Saving a few lines of ABAP Code

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:01:00 +0000

Well whatever you could save now a days :)
Not that it's going to earn much interest from the Banks.

Just in case you are tired of reading numerous thoughts on the global credit crunch, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainability and would like to enjoy the quantum of technical solace then you are in luck. Thomas Jung & other enterprise geeks have started a new Blog Enterprise Geeks . Also, if you are not very particular about reading SAP / ABAP horrors only :) then Coding Horror is another good read.

And if you want some plain geeky fun then grab a coffee and hold it tight ... Coffee Corner at SDN :) ..there you go.....

Actually, I just wanted to wish you all a very happy new year. So I am wishing now ( It's never too late ).

And if you are still reading....
Off the top of your head, do you remember a few ways to save some coding effort through better use of ABAP statements? To add a few from my side :

I've found that some developers still use function 'FORMAT_MESSAGE' or a table T100 to get the message text [ e.g. After a function call or BDC CALL TRANSACTIONS ]. This function 'FORMAT_MESSAGE' is also used in stanadard SAP programs [ may be in old ones ].

I think a better way is to use '...INTO text' variant of message statement rather than calling functions or actually writing 60 lines of code to select the data from table T100 and then replace the & with variables.

DATA lv_message_text TYPE string.
CALL FUNCTION ... EXCEPTIONS error_message = 4.
IF sy-subrc <> 0.
MESSAGE ID sy-msgid TYPE sy-msgty NUMBER sy-msgno
INTO lv_message_text
WITH sy-msgv1 sy-msgv2 sy-msgv3 sy-msgv4.
ENDIF.
* Now use lv_message_text to prepare your error report
Write : lv_message_text.

Another important point : Do you know what is the effect of having an exception error_message in the function call? Like 'When_Others', this is not a defined exception in the function interface. However, it can be specified for any function call.

Some of the standard function modules throw error messages without the raising clause and that means you can't capture/handle these messages from your calling program...unless you copy that standard function and make it civilized or else use this exception error_messages while calling the function.

If the error_message addition is specified after EXCEPTIONS, then you should be able to capture error messages in the calling program, even if the function module does not have the RAISING addition for those messages.

I guess, it's always safer to call standard functions with the error_message exception. I wonder why SAP does not add this in the pattern for function call.... like WHEN_OTHERS.

Add your tips/views in the comment section. But I wish you a very happy new year anyway :)

How to get a quick response from SAP OSS?

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:48:00 +0000

If you are still dealing with on old SAP version then tell them it's affecting your plan to upgrade or eSOA transformation planned for 2012 :). A 'High' priority call for an old version does not carry same weight as it does for a new version. Thumb rule is that any SAP ERP version having characters [ e.g. B, C, D etc. ] should be considered dead and should not be treated.

Take a look at one of the SAP OSS Notes and prepare a very similar document [ except the OSS Note Number, that will be generated for you by OSS later ]. The document should clearly indicate the problem, prerequisite, version affected, scenario and of course a hint on correction required :). Make sure that no custom scenario/code is mentioned in the problem description. It means you should first be able to replicate the problem in a SAP standard scenario. If relevant, provide the information on which lines they should put the break-point along with the test data.

I wonder why SAP does not have a Big Switch to On/Off all custom code enhancements. For urgent situations, it can be really useful in establishing whether the problem is due to custom code or SAP standard. [ Deactivating specific BADIs and enhancements is OK but there is no Big Switch ]

Assign correct component responsible for the issue. In case you've found the exact problem in the code then check the component of that particular package. For example, if you are facing an issue with file download in one of the FI transactions that does not essentially mean it belongs to FI area. You may find that issue is due to Unicode or GUI related functions hence the component should be selected accordingly.

Remember that initially the message might get assigned to junior consultants. Their aim is to buy some time till an experienced consultant can have a look. At first stage, be prepared to get some not so perfect workarounds or even wrong suggestions. Your aim should be to counter incorrect suggestions and get your message assigned to a senior consultant, unless you want to get caught into a chain of OSS Notes and correction programs.

Always be ready with the system open for SAP to check even if you have replicated the problem for a standard scenario, they will check it on your system.

Understand that there are some good/practical reasons why SAP OSS does not work the way you think they should.

All said and done, I've high regards for SAP OSS as a SAP knowledge warehouse. There is a wealth of information, enough to resolve most of your SAP related issues. I use SAP OSS, not just to find corrections for the problems with SAP standard, but also while preparing my own custom solutions. There is good chance that the kind of solution you want to implement, the technical aspects of the solution might well have been used in a standard SAP solution.

If you know how to search for technical stuff, in other words, you don't have to feel lucky to find something relevant then SAP OSS is a very useful resource for learning, customising solutions and resolving bugs. You can use SAP OSS to find relevant APIs, application/config details, Guides, correction programs, code-snippets [ to decide an exact position for break-points rather than debugging a complete SAP application ].

Comments on your experience with SAP OSS will be appreciated.

Geeks are more predictable than others!

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:20:00 +0000

However I was expecting it to be a bit earlier when I wrote Web2.0 simulation wave at SDN and that was almost a year back.

Geeks are predictable because they follow a technology trend more passionately than others. And at times they do create some useful stuff in the process.

Though great things happen when Geeks become unpredictable and come up with something very new to the world. But it can be difficult to handle such a disruption every now and then. And it's probably good that they tend to be predictable after every major disruption.

Not sure who said this first but there you go :

It's not just about who did it first but also that who did better.

So following a trend or even copying/adapting is not a bad idea provided you can do better than the original or carve a niche for yourself.

Geeks from SAP Community are getting together to adapt a twitter like functionality in an Enterprise environment and it's called Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment (ESME).

It was started by a conversation on Plurk. Read this post by Abesh and follow the links to get the story. Other deserving links are ESME - Social Enterprise Messaging Experiment by Yojibee. Dennis Howlett also blogged about his side of story on SDN.

Seems like this enterprise microblogging application will not only support human conversations but also the interactions between humans and system objects (Business Objects/Applications/Data). Read the Requirements document.

Requirement 1 is :

ERP notifications - Extensible notification system for events in backend systems. Think new sales order for customer x. Auto-generated enterprise tweets to Plurk-style cliques, defined by UME roles & groups (see #7). Could also include workflow notifications a la UWL.

I had something similar to say when I wrote this funny stuff ERP2.0 - The Blog of a SAP Purchase Order .

My suggestion will be to first concentrate on developing the UI and messaging architecture for human interactions. Enterprise services should be developed for communication with backend system.

Later these services can use the SAP Business object/Workflow event's existing subscribe/publish model for system generated notifications/alerts.

There are several type of events that gets triggered in a SAP system:
Due to a change in the status of a Business Object/System [ e.g. SAP Business
Objects/ABAP Objects (workflow) events ]. Also these events can be configured/coded to get published when a certain condition/status is reached. Like when a Business Objects ( e.g. Puchase Order ) is created/changed an event PO.Create can be triggered. Relevant workflows / Functions/ Methods can subscribe to these events.

Basically, ESME Services can listen to a particular event by subscribing to the event of an Object. Actually, this is the way current workflow system works. However workflow tasks have added functionality. Workflow is not just a messaging / alert mechanism but it also helps in completing a process when a series of people / applications are involved.
or just as an external/internal notification [ e.g. Job events to start a job or ABAP Object events to trigger a method ].
There are other more system/application specific [ e.g. Report events ] but not
very relevant here.

I will keep an eye on ESME but unlike earlier attempts of SAP community to replicate Blog/Wiki applications, this one seems have a better case for replication.

Set Theory and Programming (ABAP)

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:10:00 +0000

Marilyn Pratt tagged me due to 8 things we don't know about her :). As usual I was embarrassingly late and could not comply. She has got some really interesting real life stories to share. As they say, truth can be stranger than fiction. Of course I am not comparing with Bollywood movies but this one from Zoli can be really close.

I ~~will~~ probably won't be able to write a complete post about myself but for the respect...of elders :) ..

Back in 2005, I was an active member of SDN and then applied to be an expert blogger. Marilyn approved my Blog application :) . Somehow I could not contribute as much as I should have but then that's another story [ there is none really ]. However, I did get something else along with my rights to blog at SDN. My cool black and white photograph...cropped nicely...

Actually, that 'cropped nicely' part was done by SDN however B&W part was by accident. I tried editing my snap in MS photoshop and by default it was saved as B&W.
[ I now know about the issue with Photoshop ].

I developed my personal website, sometime in 2004 and somehow I do like this black and white color scheme . Believe it or not, I've not updated my personal website for ages. Though my subscribers list for the website is a lot bigger compared to my Blog. Just in case you are feeling jealous, it's still very modest and under control. I will blame Dunbar and his number for that :).Dunbar's number is the supposed cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships.

Before you set high expectations with this post, 'Set Theory and ABAP', let me clarify that I have not done my engineering in computer/software field. I am actually a Mechanical Engineer by qualification. So I still manage to try a few things on my own before googling and realizing that it was invented million years back.

Have you ever felt that some of the mathematical operations, if available in ABAP, can be really useful at times. To start with..what about Set Theory. Will an specific implementation for some of the Set theory operators might just be useful in ABAP Programming?

For Example : Given that internal table ITAB1 has the same structure as ITAB2, if we can use the Set operators like UNION, INTERSECTION etc.

It can be implemented as a Class/methods or Functions or even as ABAP Statements. I can understand that complex use of these statements will result in degradation of performance but it can be useful for specific scenarios.

By complex use I mean something like : ITAB4 = (ITAB1 ∩ ITAB2) - ITAB3

As an example : Let's say you have 3 Internal tables already available through
Function read etc. in your ABAP program.
ITAB1 [ Employees who performed well consistently for the past 3 years ]
ITAB2 [ Employees who has been promoted during past 3 years ]
If we have set operators then we can write just a few lines of code to get :

Employees who performed and promoted = (ITAB1 ∩ ITAB2)

Employees who performed but did not get promoted = ITAB1 - (ITAB1 ∩ ITAB2)

Employees who didn't perform but got promoted = ITAB2 - (ITAB1 ∩ ITAB2)

You may find some interesting and related articles on web:

P.S. - I wrote a quick program to compare the object list between two huge transport requests. The idea was to find the objects which are not shared by both. In terms of Set terminology it can be called a DisjointUnion - all elements in either set A or set B, but not in both.
As people normally search for these kind of utilities to reach my post. Use standard FMs / APIs to write your own code. See Function Module TRINT_READ_REQUEST.

P.P.S. - Blogger's editor has a problem. It does not accept the URL links with special characters - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number, as it is. And saves it as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar.
Updated : However, you can write in HTML as Dunbar%27s+number and that works.

BPX & Geek Gap: Buzzwords from SAP Community

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:15:00 +0000

Interesting !!

Dan Woods is trying to compose a BPX Book with the help of SAP Community and then having another thought here. See Mark's comment on Intelligent Design Vs. Evolution approach. I wrote about it sometime back Perfection by Design and not Evolution. Is it Practical?

It seems Blogger's bug is catching me which forces you to reference your own old posts, even if it is as much related as Yahoo & Microsoft :)

But why is it 'Interesting'? Have you ever read any book which tries to answer 'Who is an ABAP Developer?' or 'About Java Programmer's Role' or even 'Who is a SAP Consultant' ? I doubt.
[ I hope I won't get a few amazon-links in the comments, telling these books do exist and I should buy one]

The BPX Book is to answer the question - 'Who is a BPX [ Business Process Expert ]?' and not about what is BPM [ Business Process Management ]? One reason for writing a Book about BPX is probably because clarification of the role seems to be equally/more important than the BPM technology available at the moment.

So who exactly is BPX apart from being the coolest super(wo)man of IT's new era. Is S/he real?
I am not trying to answer it, you better read and write ( if you want to ) the BPX Book.

I guess analysts at Gartner are better placed to draw the hype cycle of these SAP Community Buzzwords. However, I think 'Peak of Inflated Expectations' is still not reached for 'BPX'. So 'Trough of Disillusionment' is far away.

I can only write about some of my thoughts on BPX & Geek Gap [ That too might well have been contaminated by me reading a few related blogs / the Book ]:

eSOA & BPX?
May be IT is getting serious about shifting the power to the Business users. And eSOA is another step in the direction of shifting the software power to the Business side. The idea is that developers / consultants/ software makers will only provide the building blocks, in the form of services [ eSOA components ] along with the modelling/mashup tools. Optimists believe that someday these tools will be so
powerful and simple enough that business users will be able to model their complex business scenarios, all by themselves, and the (da-vinci-)code will be generated automatically. Till that time BPX is a stop gap arrangement.
Only issue – that gap could be rather huge.
Also check SAP's announcement at SAPPHIRE® 2008 SAP Ushers In New Era for Business Process Management . Luckily, you don't need a telescope to see this Galaxy.

Geek Gap & BPX
Suddenly you may find that all the problems & failures of IT projects are being attributed to this ‘Geek gap’. To an extent that you might wonder if it is actually a black hole. Till now, bad project management was responsible for most of the failed projects but now it’s Geek gap. For example, see SAP Network Blog: Geek Gap Kills the Handheld Census by the authors of a book called The Geek Gap.
In my opinion, failures due to incompetent requirement determination by Business users or a poor solution provided by unskilled developer/consultant, should not be considered as Geek Gap. It covers only the problems encountered due to difference in the mindset of business users and technology consultants.
For example: A Business user asks for 'Time Display' along side the customer data display of the Interaction Software. The intention being - it will help in greeting their customers [ Good Morning , evening etc. ]. Developer thought it's easy and provided the system time alongside the customer data. Next day, customers in different time zones are amused, if not angry.
That's Geek Gap. BPX is a promise to bridge that Geek Gap.
If the developer would have even slight inclination to understand the business needs, S/he would understand that the time should be displayed as per customer's time zone. At the same time, if users understand that developers may not have the background knowledge then they will take extra care in communicating the requirement.
However, if the business user never really thought about the need of displaying time alongside customer-data and still expects that the specified software will be able to serve the 'Greeting' need then it's a failure to determine the requirement and can't be termed as Geek Gap.
I thought of a few more points but only the headings at the moment:
Difference between (Techno)Functional Consultant & BPX
[ BPX's ability to understand the Business process of an organization (Industry Vertical) while Functional Consultants is more into Horizontals ( across industry ) like Finance , Purchasing etc. ]
Web2.0 ( collaboration ) and BPX
[ I don't see this skill as specific to the BPX role. In the long run everyone will need this. However, BPX can be the initiator for the change ]
BPX - All-rounder or Split Personality [ Sometimes Netweaver is accused of the split personality disorder due to Java & ABAP stacks. But that's technology. People can't assume the personality disorder so easily. They have to be an all-rounder unless they had the disorder even before]
I will probably write a Part II , if required.

SAP, Environmental concerns & email etiquette

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:00:00 +0000

We have a responsibility to the environment. Before printing this email or any other document, let's ask ourselves whether we need a hard copy

Good news is that you need not necessarily have to quit your SAP job to show your concerns for the environment.

As a SAP consultant we can help the environment, at our own level, by convincing our clients to use paperless communication. The features like email for document outputs instead of printing/faxing or to use web services/EDI for document exchange are also beneficial from the environmental perspective.

Also, with the growing environmental concerns, it is easier to convince our customers to use these SAP features.

Ok so I've covered two of the terms mentioned in the heading of this post but what about the email etiquette?

Well the problem is with SAP's design for sending SapScript mails. [Fact - SapScripts are still widely used in SAP applications ] . In most of the cases, the standard solution for emailing is incapable of sending a main-body-text and can only send a mail with subject and output document as an attachment. To me this is not as per the email etiquette . Of course you as a consultant can enhance the SAP functionality to include body-text but the point is : It would have been a lot easier for SAP to include the functionality with a minor change.

Technically, Script output [ print/mail/fax ] is sent by the call to the function module CLOSE_FORM. The same function also creates emails depending on the output medium. Only if SAP would have chosen to call the new APIs like SO_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1 in place of function CONVERT_OTF_AND_MAIL, it could well have been possible to configure the solution to include email body-texts.

Rather than changing this centrally in CLOSE_FORM, in recent patches, it has used CLOSE_FORM to get the otfdata , convert to PDF and then it calls the API SO_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1 etc.

Further, it means all applications should be changed to include the desired functionality and it will be a development change rather than config / enhancement.

In any case, it's fairly simple to use emails for outputs. If your client is not concerned about the email etiquette then you should be able to configure/ enhance the solution using SPRO config or BTEs ( Transaction FIBF ). Just check SAP OSS and you can get the recommended development solution for the particular application. Your Basis team would be able to help you with the SCOT configs etc.

And if you managed to implement emailing solution with body-text, don't forget to include the sentence in fashion :

'Think before you print'.

ERP2.0 - The Blog of a SAP Purchase Order

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:52:00 +0000

Nothing serious ..or may be !!

Welcome to ERP2.0 : The Blog of a Purchase Order

Date 07-Oct-2007 Time 01:10:00 PM

NASDAQ crashed today. Just wondering what would be my net worth in USD ( Foreign Currency ) now. Feeling lucky to have GBP as my local currency :)

Tags : EXCHANGE-RATE

Date 06-Oct-2007 Time 12:10:00 AM

I am not feeling good today. Change in conditions. This guy with user-id RMTIWARI robbed me of my value. Now I have a net price of '1000.00 GBP'. Unbelievable, just a few moments back, I was one of the wealthiest Purchase Orders in my company having net worth of '5000.00 GBP'.
I don't want to live any more. Someone please complete my lifecycle.

Tags : RMTIWARI, PRICE CHANGE, CONDITION VALUE

Date 05-Oct-2007 Time 01:40:00 PM

Feeling heavier today. Someone added a few items to me with some real heavy stuff.
How would you feel when you are carrying 4 CAR-ENGINEs? Never mind... it also means I am much wealthier than before.

Tags : ITEM, QTY, RMTIWARI

Date 04-Oct-2007 Time 01:40:00 PM

Happy Birthday to me. BTW, don't send/attach any documents to me through GOS [ Generic Object Services ]. Just send me a link and it will appear on my blog. ..That's right..

Welcome to ERP2.0. I am a Purchase Order... but even I have a blog . Also, visit my blog and search through Tags or titles.

I will let you know how it goes :)

Tags : CREATED, RMTIWARI

What if SAP Purchase Orders ( For purely technicals/geeks, ME21N.. ) start having a Blog rather than change-logs ( Change Documents , remember CDHDR, CDPOS)? That would be Cool.

Can we replace change logs and archiving of outputs/prints/emails of SAP Business Objects by utilising a Blogging software? With the ability to search and arrange based on tags, it might just be useful.

Sometime back , I wrote about the simulation/integration of web2.0 stuff with/in SAP, see Web2.0 simulation wave at SDN and it seems to be happening now. See the report from TechEd. Now Nigel James is integrating Wordpress ( Blog-Platform ) with SAP.

I wonder if James Governor & Thomas are also excited about the opportunity to read Purchase Order's Blogs :-)

Next what, A Purchase Order who wants to have a Second Life , may be this time as a Sales Order or at least as a STP : Stock Transfer Order :-)

Thingamy and a Failure of web2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:08:00 +0000

Tags are not enough. In fact, sometimes they don't make any sense at all, specially on my Blog. Check my posts based on tags. Frankly, they won't make much sense otherwise also ;-)

I guess now Sig will have to change his Tag ( sorry triple ) line as well .
Here's my 30*3=90 Megs(approx), at least now go run Germany.

I don't talk much but recently I commented on Sig's Blog and also shared my fictional idea about a Software Time Machine. "Sig + nicely explained + Triples" with the help of a few examples.

How come so many enterprise software bloggers reviewed, applauded , criticized & suggested but didn't notice such a basic issue with Thingamy's design[ in the hindsight , of course ]?

Are these Web2.0 conversations shallow and lack the depth needed for any substantial impact?
Is everyone busy stating the obvious?
Is it because startups like Thingamy are less within the range of their business compared to SAP?
Is it a failure of web2.0?
Or is it a success? [At least everyone will share the blame. ]

Make a difference or stop writing......ok so here is my STOP, for the time being ;-)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is my TechEd, Go run to Germany.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SAP Business ByDesign is twice as complete. [ ByMistake ;-) ]

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:50:00 +0000

SAP announced its most complete on-demand Business Software Solution for SMB sector. The much awaited ( at least by the Enterprise Bloggers ) solution was designed around just 4 key principles. However, two of those principles seems to be completeness [ mentioned twice in the fact sheet of press release on SAP's site , may be just for the sake of completeness or to convey that redundancy is another ].

Well that might just be a minor mistake but read the news here : SAP Business ByDesign:Press Fact Sheet, September 2007

SAP Business ByDesign™ Unveiled; First Live Midmarket Customers Experience the Power of the Most Complete On-Demand Business Software Solution

Perfection by Design and not Evolution. Is it Practical?

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:19:00 +0000

To what extent and how?

It's a long time since I wrote here [ and forever since anything sensible ;-) ]. But I finally got my first bank holiday after getting shifted to the UK.

Yesterday, I went to a Ghazal (most well known form of Urdu Poetry) concert of Jagjit Singh, one of the most respected Ghazal singers of our era. Excellent but somehow I was a bit disappointed by the choice of Ghazals. Like the Indian curry houses in the UK, it seemed tailored to suit the local demand. The near absence of Mirza Ghalib's ghazals from a Ghazal concert is like...just missing a chance to satisfy the pseudo-intellect of everyone involved.

Hui Muddat ki Ghalib mar gaya par yaad aata hai
Woh har ek baat pe kehna ki youn hota to kya hota !!

That very ( very very ) loosely translates to:

Has been ages since Ghalib died but his memories still haunt,
His thoughts on almost every scenario; if it happens like this then what? And what if it doesn't?

He must have made a good programmer as well :-)

Cynthia Rettig [ I have no idea who She/he is :-) ] wrote an article on "The Trouble With Enterprise Software" which was more of a question rather than answer about whether enterprise software has become too complex to be effective?

If you don't believe in the 7 days theory then it all started with relatively very simple, single cell formation, called Amoebas. But the million years of evolution transformed it into a giant and complex monster(s). Some of the most complex ones are known as Humans [ or ERP ].

Well, there might be simple solutions to the complex problems. [ At least till we realize ].

From the mentioned article:

To manage this growing complexity, IT departments have grown substantially: As a percentage of total investment, IT rose from 2.6% to 3.5% between 1970 and 1980.2 By 1990 IT consumed 9%, and by 1999 a whopping 22% of total investment went to IT. Growth in IT spending has fallen off, but it is nonetheless surprising to hear that today’s IT departments spend 70% to 80% of their budgets just trying to keep existing systems running.

Not sure if The law of diminishing returns, played its part on IT including Enterprise Software. Initially, all they wanted is some kind of accounting software that can replace their Pen/Files/Calculators and were happy when they got it. So in the beginning, even for a small investment, the returns were terrific however as their needs grew further from simple to complex, the investments started to rise substantially but in proportion, the returns were not so great.

Business started expecting their answers from IT and rightly so. Answers for not just Whats but Whys, Hows and Whens as well. Further, it led to complexity that now seems so unjustifiable.

Some of the problems are also due to the fact that it was all driven by evolution and not by design. So at every given point we end up in having something that will be phased out or evolve itself further. But then this is the case with almost every other thing.

Read the articles of Shai Agassi, [ Mind the Gap / Software by Design / What is ERP? ].

Read Thomas's counter post about the mentioned article here.

The major problem however can be due to a very well known fact. ‘To err is Human’. Software does not make mistakes by itself but unfortunately it's made by Humans (correction: programmers). The decisions are finally taken by the IT & business people and only around 20% of those are likely be good ones [That too not always]. Bad decisions keep on multiplying the problems and after a few years it becomes a mess. It's not correct to blame just the software.

The difference between excellence and Perfection is probably just a step. But it does take a lot to bridge that gap. Probably, nothing can be perfectly perfect ever, however that does not mean it won't survive. But there is no guarantee it will either ;-)

Difference between SAP Developer, Technical Consultant & Techno Functional?

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 27 May 2007 18:47:00 +0000

Question:
Hi, I am a recruiter and would like to know what is the difference between these 3: SAP Developer, SAP Technical Consultant and SAP Techno Functional Consultant. Would highly appreciate a reply from you.

Broadly, there are 3 areas in SAP [ There can be several other sub-categories ]:

Functional [ like MM/PP/SD ] : Related to business processes and configuration
Development [ also called technical or ABAP or Netweaver programming ]: Related to programming
Basis/Netweaver/SAP/Technical admin : related to system installation and support

a.) SAP developer is related with 2.
b.) SAP Technical consultant is related with 2 and can also be referred for 3. So you
need to check the requirement in details and ensure which one is being referred.
It also indicates a higher level of expertise and experience in the field
compared to a.)
c.) Techno-Functional is someone with experience in both development [
programming ] as well as functional areas. Generally, these are the consultants with
a lot of experience in development and by virtue of working with functional
consultants and users, they've also acquired skills in business process and
config [ functional ] side.

In any case, for your purpose you should look into details of a consultant's CV and try to match with the resourcing-requirement document.

So it seems that recruitment consultants are now getting serious about their job and trying to understand what business needs. They usually rely on word-matching between resourcing requirement document and consultant's CVs.

When will CharITy begin at home?

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:29:00 +0000

I really don't know what should I write about. After posting a comment on SDN,I was thinking about why IT companies do not act as a role model for the implementation of technology before asking others to do the same. Not sure if I am correct but as I mentioned in my comment:

I think unlike ERP, GRC solution will be required for all the companies and IT companies will be no exception.

Generally, we develop enterprise suits and industry specific solutions for other industries but never felt this need for the IT industry. Irony is that while other industries use powerful solutions like SAP for most of their business processes, IT uses MS Excel, Outlook and some project management software to handle their own processes/projects [other than HR & FI ( to an extent ) ].

Anyway, I am sure someone from Enterprise Software Bloggers' will discuss this, if it is really an issue.

However, there is another and more down to earth topic. After getting many queries from SAP aspirants about their career, I am finding it hard to avoid/answer them. Do you think there is an issue of their inclusion into SAP ecosphere? Lately, I could not reply to most of their queries because it's so very difficult to provide a customized answer, each time. Will someone please come up with a SAP like solution [that requires little customisation ;-)] for their career queries and guide them?

I found this forum on SDN, which seems to be related but the issue is that Career issues should only be answered by experienced and competent people. After all it's a question of someone's career, not the same as messing up a BADI implementation.

As an example, I found someone suggested an SD consultant to change his career and become an ABAP programmer. Just because that guy is working on a service project & involved with testing in SAP SD area.

I found an interesting debate on the same forum, What innovation is needed to meet the needs of the future workforce?.

I would suggest, please include the SAP aspirants as part of the SAP ecosphere and provide them proper guidance. I think a SAP Career Forum at SDN should be started and answers should be reviewed by experienced and established SAP Career Gurus.

In case you are interested in the queries that are being asked, let me know.

SAP Helpdesk to User: I know what you did in the last transaction

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sat, 12 May 2007 16:56:00 +0000

So the next generation software will improve the user-experience and also change the roles of users and developers. But how? Read the in-depth analysis of 3G Software by Shai Agassi. A part of Shai's post is quoted here:

In that sense the users are going from Data Entry to Exception handling and co-authoring
Systems are going from Aggregation to harmonization and more importantly Automation
As structure is added into information, its ability to route intelligently increases by orders of magnitude, hence the value-add of data moves away from the store and into "right-time routing"
forcing developers to go from transactional programming to Event centric resolution

I just thought of at least one area of improvement. The scenario is something like as described below:

A SAP user is creating an order on his transformed SAP system and encounters an error. He is now thinking about informing his SAP Helpdesk and about the interrogation process that he has to go through. Just when he has started writing about the details about simulating the error with the screen-shots/input data and actions, he receives a call/email from his SAP Helpdesk.

Don't worry son, I know you are facing a problem and I know exactly what you did in the last transaction. Relax we'll take care of it.

Well that's an exaggeration probably. But is it not an area of improvement for SAP? When my internet explorer crashes ( which is does every now and then ), I at least get that moral support pop-up from Microsoft Windows which begs me to send the information online with a click of button. As if they are going to solve the issue and it will never happen again.

Can we have something like this in SAP? So if a user is facing an error and wants to contact SAP Helpdesk, all he needs to do is to run the transaction with the tracker on and then send the information to SAP Helpdesk. With a click of button. All the related information regarding input required for error simulation, dump, error, authorization failure, user default settings, user-gui settings [ SAPGui ]/IE settings [ for Web-Gui ], navigation-path etc. will be send to the SAP Helpdesk with the in-built mechanism.

For SAPGui transactions, it sounds like sending the BDCDATA table of the recorded transaction through a workflow-task-method, which can be run by the SAP Helpdesk.
Almost similar to eCATT functionality but needs to be embedded within the transaction.

For web-gui transactions, navigation-path, click tracking, form-data....does not it sound like Sitemeter or MyBlogLog?

Also, the information can be recorded in two ways. One is to show the demo of screens, input and navigation sequence. More of a static representation of the flow like the flash-demo we see on websites.

Second one can be a guided procedure to actually run the transaction with the same set of data and navigation sequence.

Some of these click-tracking and navigation information can easily be recorded using the JavaScript in a same way that we do for our blogs and sites.

However, a refined framework will be required to completely build this mechanism. I think with the MVC architecture of BSPs and WebDynpro, it will not be too difficult to build the event driven data-collector for recording the input-data and screen change [ navigation ] etc.

Basically, the idea is that user will click on the "Start Tracking" button at the beginning of the transaction and then...when he encounters the error he gets a moral-support-pop-up.

What do you think?

Web2.0 simulation wave at SDN

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Fri, 11 May 2007 16:44:00 +0000

Geeks at SDN have started bringing most of the web2.0 innovations on SAP platform. After a few widgets and then a BSP Wiki, what do you think will be the next wave at SDN?

My bet is that it will be a open source blogger like platform, a forum, a twitter simulation or another dig, written in ABAP/BSP/WebDynpro. Geeks are geeks :) . I think the new trend on SDN will be to copy each and every idea of web2.0 and develop it through ABAP/SAP tools.

Not a bad idea provided we can find some use of it in the enterprise scenario. Otherwise, I will prefer an open source project executed with the collaboration of Business Process Experts and Geeks to develop something which can find real use in Industry.

But as I said geeks are geek.... How can we build a Blogger platform for SAP?
If we can build so many solutions for the industry what's the big deal about developing a Blogger platform. In fact, it should be easy as we are the users of this platform and already aware of the functionalities required. Don't need a functional specification either.

Ok so it's not a big deal. So what about this one....how can we build a workable blogger platform by utilising existing SAP functionalities for document management.

For example, how can you build a blogger platform [ at least something like SDN weblog platform ] by utilizing DMS [ document management service ] and BSPs etc. The restriction is that you should not be designing and creating a database of your own rather use SAP standard functionality & tables.

So basically the steps can somewhat be [ don't have DMS in miniSAP so can't check] :

Configure a new document type for a Blog [ in SPRO --> Cross Applications --> DMS ]
The content server can be the database or file server.

Create a new Class for Blog in classification [ Xn CL01 ]. Attach a few characteristics to store the tags [ topics ] related with a post.

Now develop a BSP application and embed a rich text editor [ HTML/JavaScript ] into it for editing post [ doc ]. You can use document BAPIs to create or change a post [ BAPI_DOCUMENT_CREATE2 & BAPI_DOCUMENT_CHANGE2 ] .

List the posts & get post data using BAPI_DOCUMENT_GETLIST, BAPI_DOCUMENT_* etc or use the document table DRAW. Keep the tags of post as classification characters tics . Use BAPI_OBJCL_CREATE, BAPI_CLASS_GET_CLASSIFICATIONS etc.

Ok forget it :)

SAP's Co-Innovation : A Myth or Reality?

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Sun, 06 May 2007 09:22:00 +0000

'Innovation', the term, is so widely used and abused that Nick Carr must be thinking of writing another book - 'Innovation does not matter' ;-)

So it seems SAP's promise of “Co-Innovation” has attracted wave of new SAP Customers, Partners to SAPPHIRE® ’07. Later, Thomas proved that Co-innovation is a strength not a weakness . Unlike Marketing guys, Thomas did provide real examples of Innovations at SAP.

However, I got technical on the definition of co-innovation and why it should not be called a co-innovation. But Vinnie came up with a better logic. See comments on Thomas' post.

Now, in line with my earlier post Views & iViews, I will list the two view points here;
SAP's Co-innovation is:

A Myth:
Is it a customer/partner led Innovation or co-innovation? Do you think both convey the same meaning?
Will customers/partners get the share in the resultant IP. As Vinnie pointed, if they won't then it's not co-innovation.
In effect, is it lending/borrowing Ideas for further co-execution? Then it's not co-innovation.
Thomas said "When two or more companies sit down and figure out a way of doing something new, or significantly better, cheaper, faster, then I’d label it co-innovation." Most of the innovation that the System Integrators have delivered, if any, the driver has been the ideas/requirements from the user side or the ideas evolved due to SIs proximity to the users. But I don't think it was tagged as 'Co-innovation' then.
If it's important to bring people together from different backgrounds, to foster innovation, then why not do it as 'OPEN' [ as in ‘open source’ ]? e.g. why Colgate-Sap joint venture can’t disclose about what exactly they are working on? Who knows, if GM/SDN/BPX will have their viewpoint.

A Reality:
Co-innovation is a reality. But about joint IP and OPEN as in 'Open Source', please don't complicate it as yet, it's just the beginning.
It's an initiative taken by a Product company and the progress is being made.
Has to be done because it's needed.
Results will tell that SAP's co-innovation is indeed a reality.
Because SAP is learning from others like IBM.
Forget everything, it's because people at SAP like Thomas are honest with their approach and I quote :
"Developments such as the BI accelerator and enterprise search appliance with Intel, Cisco and GRC, and the Duet appliance with HP and Microsoft are also a step in the right direction. Enterprise services too, are evidence of a deeper customer centric co-innovation mindset. SDN itself is a big leap forward to openness and conversation, but there is much more to do.
I don’t think the SAP can afford to be smug about SDN. It is just the beginning. It would be a shame to say we have SDN, therefore we get this community- co-innovation thing. We need to continue to focus on how to expand, enrich and deepen the conversation, not how we market the fact that we are having a conversation. "

Time will tell..

While BPX Bridge is in the making...

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Manohar Tiwari) — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:08:00 +0000

....Let's make the two ends meet for the time being.

That seems to be a good idea. See David's post SDN and BPX on a Joint Mission.

BPX [ Business Process Expert ] is possibly the bridge which will eventually connect the geeks with users [ someone suggested Geeks say 'User' when they actually mean 'Dumb' ] or if you don't like to personify then technology with business.

However, it has never been easy. As they say, East is East & West is West..and even if they decide to meet, technically it will just be a point or may be a thin line.

If you check SDN (Geek) Blogs, you'll find a few bright ideas presented but very rarely these ideas are supported with a proper business case. I think if Geeks can just start thinking a bit in this line or take help from the Business Process Practitioners to present a business case/motivation for their technical ideas then it should make a lot of difference. If they have a good idea it must be able to make at least some difference in the way things are done.

To motivate Geeks, if anyone who is writing a technical blog but has made at least one convincing example under the heading 'The Business Case' , then it should be tagged as both SDN as well BPX and rewarded accordingly.

Similarly, if a Business Process Practitioner can come with a requirement to improve a business process/scenario, he should take assistance from Geeks in finding a technical approach for the same.

Also, some kind of open challenge can be started by detailing one business process and then challenging Geeks and Business Process Practitioners to improve/implement.

I must have read the example below ( or similar ) on one of the Enterprise Blogs.
e.g. Recruitment Team needs a basic background check for the candidates.
Integrate with web and add a 'Get/Match Details' feature in recruitment module.

Input provided : Name, Email, Qualification details, skill area, ex-company name etc.
The info will be used to check if :
The university does award the mentioned degree.
His record/points on SDN.
A reference-required mail to SDN Moderator ;-)
......