topic Re: DURATION_DETERMINE in Application Development and Automation Discussions

DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:29:14 GMT

I was looking at this fm DURATION_DETERMINE and it doesnt seem to be returning the correct value.

If I put in:

Import parameters Value

UNIT DY

FACTORY_CALENDAR Z1

Changing parameters Value

START_DATE 03/02/2009

Result: 03/02/2009

START_TIME 00:00:00

Result: 00:00:00

END_DATE 03/09/2009

Result: 03/05/2009

END_TIME 00:00:00

Result: 24:00:00

Export parameters Value

DURATION 4.0

However, shouldn't I be getting a value of 5?

because the number of days include March 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 9th.

It looks like it is taking 3/9 and transforming it to 3/5 for some reason.

Should I be using different input variables?

Mike

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:15:44 GMT

Try using following function module.

SD_CALC_DURATION_FROM_DATETIME : Find the difference between two date/time and report the difference in hours

These hours you can convert in whatever you want days, weeks, months and so on

L_MC_TIME_DIFFERENCE : Find the time difference between two date/time.

Regards,

Lalit Mohan Gupta.

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:47:01 GMT

Lalit,

I'm using that Fm because I need mdays (manufacturing days) so Saturday / Sundays don't count.

I don't have fm SD_CALC_DURATION_FROM_DATETIME in my system.

Any other advise?

Mike

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:17:42 GMT

when I change the input from z1 to z2 it calculates correctly. Given my example I now have 5 mdays!!

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:57:22 GMT

There possible reason why you are getting 4 would that the FM does not include the end date.

Try out with few more examples and see if you get the same kind of result.

If yes then you can add 1 to get the date including end date.

Regards,

Lalit Mohan Gupta.

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:34:56 GMT

For all who stumbled from search over this thread:
Don`t use this function module!!!! It doesn`t return correct values.

I had a case to calculate the years between 01.10.1992 and 30.06.2015.

It`s obvious that the result has to be 22.75 but the function module returns 22.76.
Even when I was "playing" with including/excluding start and end days.

If you count months it`s exactly 22.75. If you count days its 22.7479....

Kind regards

Dieter

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 16:26:34 GMT

If it didn't work did you turn in a sap msg to get it fixed?

Mike

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 09:25:44 GMT

Hi Michael,

no I didn`t - fix was urgent, because report is already productive. I did an own function which calculates correct

This issue is obviously and I suppose SAP knows about.

Kind regards

Dieter

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

rainer_winkler — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 09:52:19 GMT

Hi Dieter,

the time calculation for YR (Year) gives not the result you want. The function module together with the customizing in table t006 defines a year to be exact 365 days long.

Start date January 1st.2013 00:00:01 end date January 1st.2014 00:00:01: The function returns 1

Start date January 1st.2014 00:00:01 end date January 1st.2015 00:00:01: The function returns 1.00273 (= 366/365)

The reason is, 2014 has a leap day, February 29th 2014.

You expect:

Start date January 1st.2014 00:00:01 end date January 1st.2015 00:00:01: The function shall return 1

This is also something a customer can expect. But it is a different definition of a year.

There is therefor no known error in the function module. The problem is, that time differences like year or month are often used, but often without defining exactly how it shall be calculated.

With kind regards

Rainer

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 13:39:26 GMT

Hi Rainer

I don`t think, that a year can be defined differently - a year has 365 days except leap years. So it schould be no difficulty to check for leap years and return 1,0 instead of 1,002373 if there is are leap years in the caluculating period.

I had another case to caluculated the age of employees in decimal. So for example the employee is about 60 years old - the difference will be 15 times 0,002373 = 0,035595. This effected the amount of pay-off.

I don`t care about this fm I had to calculate a lot of time and date results during the last month. So now I have a template for nearly each case.

Kind regards

Dieter

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

rainer_winkler — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 14:02:41 GMT

Hi Dieter,

there are different definitions for a year. At first I have for instance only the german article for month as a reference Monat – Wikipedia

...

Im Privatrecht gilt in Deutschland ein Monat als Zeitraum von Tag x bis Tag x des Folgemonats. Wenn dieser keinen Tag x hat, endet der Zeitraum mit dem letzten Tag des Folgemonats (§ 188 Abs. 2 und 3 BGB).

...

Im Bankwesen dauert ein Monat stets 30 Tage, ein Bankjahr dauert demzufolge lediglich 360 Tage.

...

and so on. The reason is, that a month like a year is no physical well defined time unit. So calculating time differences precisely for month and year requires a precise definition.

And the function DURATION_DETERMINE follows exactly some of this definitions for year and month. So it is working correct. But it should not be used, if some other definitions are required.

DURATION_DETERMINE is a function module that is used very often, so we should not cast a doubt that it has an error.

By the way I also would have prefered to use a function that calculates a year as you wanted (A year is over when day and month of the next year are equal to the previous year. And take the next day if this day does not exist due to a leap day. Does someone know such a function or method?

But however this functions will returns only integers for the year, not fractions. Unless someones gives a definition how to calculate a fraction based on years of unequal length.

If payings are based from time differences in year, as you noticed in your last post, you are right, in that case it is important that the program logic exactly follows the logic of the written contract. So whenever DURATION_DETERMINE is used for year and month it should be checked, whether he really returns the result the customers required.

With kind regards

Rainer

Re: DURATION_DETERMINE

Former Member — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 14:09:48 GMT

Yeah under this conditions you are right - I didn`t think about year definition for commercial use only about calendar.

Kind regards

Dieter