topic Re: Filter Mandatory fields in IDoc in Application Development and Automation Discussions

Filter Mandatory fields in IDoc

vinotha_m — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:17:41 GMT

HI Everyone,

To Filter out segments from IDoc Processing , i know we can use transaction BD53 , but this allows only the reduction of Segments and the Fields that are not mandatory.

I have a scenario where we want to Update VAT info as a separate message into Customer and Vendor IDoc (CREMAS & DEBMAS). But at this time we do not have the Account Group field, which is mandatory in both these IDoc types.

For this in WE19, for testing if I pass character '/' in the field, the IDoc executes sucessfully.

Is there any way to reduce the mandatory fields too,

or is it ok to pass '/' in Mapping itself from PI.

If i just pass '/' to these mandatory fields would it suffice?

Please help resolve.

Thanks,

Vinotha M.

Edited by: Vinotha M on May 20, 2010 3:14 AM

Re: Filter Mandatory fields in IDoc

Former Member — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:08:45 GMT


To Filter out segments from IDoc Processing , i know we can use transaction BD53 , but this allows only the reduction of Segments and the Fields that are not mandatory.

Hhmmm, IDocs can have mandatory segments (by definition/meta data), but I'm not sure what you mean by mandatory fields? I suspect you mean in this case that the application requires the presence of certain fields...

Anyhow, you cannot somehow magically remove a field from an IDoc segment. However, as you mentioned already, many applications would consider using an empty field as meaning that the field should be cleared. That's where the no data indicator (usually a '/') comes in for basically telling the application that this field shouldn't be changed. Kind of like with BAPI's where you do a change and don't mark in the corresponding "X-structure" the fields that you don't want to update.

When in doubt it often helps to look at the coding of the function module responsible for processing the inbound IDoc. Here you should see whether the developer added logic for handling a no data indicator.

So if you're doing an update and everything works fine with putting an '/' in the field I'd do that (right approach). Often though a field that is required for a create message is not really relevant for a change message. E.g. I vaguely remember that for example the material type is a required field for material creation, but when you change a material the field is actually ignored (doesn't matter at all what the value is, because changing the material type has quite some implications). I'd suspect the same might be true for account group of vendor/debitor.

Re: Filter Mandatory fields in IDoc

Former Member — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:38:59 GMT

Hi Vinotha,

In IDOC, we does not have any concept of mandatory fields. We have only mandatory segments.

Regards,

Narendra