Getting table metadata?

[Former Member]

Hello,

As I've stated before, I'm a new ABAP developer, so this may be an easy question for experienced devs. Most of my work consists of maintaining old code and provide bug fixes. My biggest problem is that I'll see select statements from tables that I have no idea what they are used for.

I'd like to generate some automatic documentation for the tables, so that I can reference it at a later time. Word document, HTML, or something like a personal JavaDoc (but for tables). The thing is, I want to be able to easily search them.

So, I came up with the idea of dumping table metadata from the database into an XML file and then with a simple script, generate the documentation.

Are there any functions that can return the names of all tables? Is there any function that can give me all column names for a given table? Lastly, is there any function that can return column type info, description, and anything else that might help me understand the fields?

I have an additional question:

Where can I get a list of all ABAP functions? I've searched the SDN but all I get are 'Getting Started' kind of tutorials/blogs. I can hit 'F1' and get the help on the system. But I'm trying to get a feel for the language by studying at night and I currently don't have Netweaver here. I thought about buying "The Official ABAP Reference", but I'm trying to find a less expensive solution.

Regards,

Robert

[Former Member]

hi,

check out the following tables :

DD01L

DD01T

DD02L

DD02T

DD03L

DD03T

DD04L

DD04T

DD05S

DD06L

DD06T

DD07L

DD07T

DD08L

DD08T

DD09C

DD09L

regards,

Navneeth K.

[Former Member]

Hi Robert,

you may have a look at <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/3337">this blog</a> by Alvaro Tejada. It provides a report for downloading the definition data of a table.

I hope it helps. Best regards,

Alvaro

[Former Member]

Navneeth,

Using the tables you mentioned, I have managed to get a lot of the necessary information. But there is one thing I haven't been able to find: 'Descriptions'

<a href="http://docmahq.com/desc.png">See Picture</a>

I've been looking left and right for the table descriptions, datatype descriptions, field descriptions, etc.

Where can I find those?

I heard at work that there was some transaction that would let you see the tables that were queried in order to load a screen (not sure if its the debugger).

[Former Member]

Hi Roberto,

All the above mentioned tables ending with 'T' are text tables. These contains the description. For example for your requirement table is DD02T.

Regards,

Navneeth K.

[Former Member]

thanks navneeth,

I checked table DD02T, and now all my requirement is over thanks.

[uwe_schieferstein]

Hello Roberto

Have you tried already to use function module <b>DDIF_FIELDINFO_GET</b>? If you do not provide a field name then the function module returns the metadata of the entire table including descriptions. Even more this function module is RFC-enabled.

Regards

Uwe

[Former Member]

thnks UWE,

It helped me .

I am not getting how to get table description.

Can any one tell me please.