BW ABAP best practice

Question

Hello,
I have always coded my logic in update rules/start routines.  However, is there a better practice?  Should my comparison values come from a table?
For example -
In an update rule I could have:
  IF ( ( COMM_STRUCTURE-comp_code = '0010' AND
         COMM_STRUCTURE-/bic/zcopastd EQ c_zcopastd and
         COMM_STRUCTURE-/bic/zcopaicc EQ c_zcopaicc and
         COMM_STRUCTURE-vtype NE '020' )
      OR COMM_STRUCTURE-/bic/zcopaqtyb = 0 ).
In a start routine I could have:
DELETE DATA_PACKAGE WHERE SALESORG = '0005'.
Should those values of 0005, 0010, 020 be in a table somewhere that gets referenced, or is this just how we handle coding in BW?  I am not an abap'r so just looking for best practice and reasoning.
Thanks,
Nick

Answer 1

Hi Nick,
Hardcoding should be avoided in any kind of coding in any language. If you hardcode any value and after some period the value changes then you have to change all occurence of the value otherwise it may result in inconsistency. Secondly if will be a time consuming process.
To avoid hardcoding you can use following ways:
1. Use Variable declaration and initialization which will hold your value. (This is also kind of hardcoding).
2. Else you can declare that value to be constant with value. (if it is pretty constant over period of time).
3. The best way is to refer the value from the table:
3.1 You can very well refer standard value from system    table.
3.2 Or Else if you have those values with you and you can not refer through system table then you can create those variable as an entry into TVARV table. TVARV table can be refered in the update rules as well as in start routine to read the value. Infact we can change the value in TVARV so that the value become dynamic and can be consistently accessed through the system.
first two solutions are also hardcoding but are more accepted. But the third one is the standard way to refer the value in the routine or code.