Need a clarification.

[Former Member]

Hi experts,

I am simply a newbie to the world of abap/sap.

At present if i get any Z requirement,firstly it is difficult for me to determine how to fetch the data.Where is the exact data ,then there could be various retrieval mechanisms where only functional specialists can guide.I am simply puzzled,i keep using Where used list in dictionary and i get a web of tables.From where?,How?,What fields i want,i cant even conclude that because i dont know where is data?.How is it linked to other tables/modules.Can someone guide ?.

Is this is a limitation of SAP system ?

[joerg_wegener]

Hi Aditya,

I hope I understand your question correctly... here we go.

You seem to need to fetch some business data for a report you want to develop, or for some BADI / BTE implementation.

The general problem is that the underlying data model of the typical SAP application is highly complex. Furthermore, it is generally not recommended to access data in the database directly. The reason for this is that such an access would bypass the business functionality layer on top of the data. This is especially problematic if you want to write data, because you could cause inconsistencies. But even if you only want to read some data, it is possible that you get into trouble. For example, some applications I know have a complex state schema for their data, and data in the database might be "deleted" from a business point-of-view and is just waiting in the database for the archiving functionality to write it to an external medium before physically deleting it. You would need deep knowledge about the data model and aspects such as the one I just mentioned.

I would recommend to access data by calling the official interfaces. These might be services which you can find in the ESR, or BAPIs that you can find in the transaction BAPI. In the BAPI case, you will find a function module behind each BAPI that you can call. The function module and the underlying business functionality would take care of the issues I mentioned above. This approach would avoid the risk of fetching incomplete or inconsistent data from the database.

I hope this helps, and that I got your question right.

Kind regards, Joerg Wegener

[Former Member]

First you need to understand what data you need to fetch:

Data may be: user data , sales data , material data , production data , financial data etc...

all different areas have different database tables.

first you are clear what kind of data you need to fetch, then based on that you should decide upon the tabled required and the respective select conditions.