How 'bout if SAP mentors "vet" SAP's choices for new ABAP keywords?

[Former Member]

What's prompting this post is the keyword "enhancement spot".

Really bothers me, unless one thinks of a "spot" as a "gathering-place", as in the English usage "night-spot" for a club or "hot-spot" for a place where a dog's skin allergies flare-up.

I mean - the only "spot" that an "enhancement spot" defines is a node in a navigation tree underneath a package in SE80. It's a bureaucratic notion, not a functional notion. There are no actual "spots" outside of the navigation trees under SE80 packages ... the "spots" in the code are "points".

So in my opinion (which as you all know is ALWAYS a "humble" opinion (heh heh heh)), maybe "enhancement node" would have better reflected the true purpose of the construct.

And even if you don't agree with me in this particular case, I'm sure you can think of other cases where similar semantic problems arise.

So - it strikes me that it would be easy for ABAP product mgrs to pass new nomenclature past the SDN mentors, to see if an SAP first-draft choice is raising too much semantic noise.

Disclaimer:

I have "no dog in this hunt" ... to use Mark Finnern's delightful term, I've been a "sleeping mentor" for almost two years no (i.e. I've been "defrocked" for some time now ...)

djh

[Former Member]

Or an adhoc Coffee Corner committee which directly advises the board based on recent contributions?

How about (currently topical):

enhancement-lbw

enhancement-duck

enhancement-silly_mid

enhancement-howzay. "reserved for WDA

enhancement-rain. "can only be caught by exiting the main program

etc...

Just a thought...

Cheers,

Julius

Edited by: Julius Bussche on Mar 31, 2011 9:25 PM

[SuhaSaha]

>

> How about (currently topical):
> 
> 
enhancement-lbw
> 
> 
enhancement-duck
> 
> 
enhancement-silly_mid

How do you know these cricketing terms? 😮

[Former Member]

Yes Julius - it certainly doesn't seem possible to get any serious conversation at Coffee Corner any longer. (I think that's what you were hinting at in your curious reply.)

There are those who'll remember that the original purpose of Coffee Corner was to provide a place for controversy to be aired (as opposed to airing it in blogs.)

"O tempora, O mores", as Cicero used to say.

Hey - how about you move this to ABAP General where maybe there might be some more interesting feedback ?

[Former Member]

Hi David,

Sorry about the jokes. Personally I don't have a problem with the ABAP keyword SPOT but confess that I had not really thought about it before because it rhymes nicely and makes sense enough to understand the choice.

Let me know if you want the thread moved to ABAP General.

Cheers and enjoy the weekend,

Julius

[ThomasZloch]

frankly, I think that the better home is here, and we don't want to risk an endless loop inside an enhancement spot, right?

Cheers

Thomas

[Former Member]

No need to apologize, JB - I completely understand.

I'm sure you know the old saying:

"When in Rome, do as the Romans".

One might paraphrase this usefully as:

"Now that the barbarians have invaded the Coffee Corner, do as the barbarians".

That's what the Romans eventually did, isn't it?

Didn't they eventually wind up choosing "barracks emperors"?

So - no need to apologize - you're just going with the flow, as a good moderator should ...

Edited by: David Halitsky on Apr 1, 2011 4:23 PM

[Former Member]

That's OK with me too, Thomas.

Although I was hoping that some ABAP guru would spot the post here and reply to explain why the notion of "enhancement spot" is in fact something more than just a node in an SE80 navigation tree whose purpose is to permit the grouping of enhancements.

Best

djh

[ThomasZloch]

We do have some "gurus" in the ABAP forums, but - I think - no deep SAP insiders that could probably tell us why something was named as it is, or by whom. Sounds like it was somebody without native English background, as "spot" seems to offer more choices of different meanings ("pimple", "stain"...), and "node" seems to be the better fitting alternative (I'm not native English speaker either...)

You guys got used to BUKRS as well back then

Happy April fools

Thomas

[Former Member]

Well - so long as no one posts back to tell us that an "enhancement spot" really does have a functional purpose as well as a purely bureaucratic (organizational) purpose, then at least I'll know that I haven't somehow missed something important about the construct.

And if someone posts back to tell us that the construct is actually more than organizational, then we all will have learned something (or at least I will have ...)

Regarding "bukrs" - I highly recommend Buck's "Dictionary of Indo-European":

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3630267.html

Very enjoyable light reading - and folks will be amazed to find out that you really don't need to know German to know what a lot German words mean ...

Best

djh