Change a query variant using a program for APD

Question

Hello everyone,
Some background:
We have a complex reporting based on calculated key figures (CKF). However, the business rules do change over time, and the formulas for CKF get outdated. So the business meaning of CKF remains the same, but the way it gets calculated - changes.
Yesterday CKF "A" = B + C
Today CKF "A" = B + D - F
Since the customer requires reporting for the former periods, maintaining several CKF of the same business meaning but calculated differently for each period becomes a problem.
Instead of having several versions of CKF "A", we decided to use APD, to periodically run the query with valid CKF, save the query results to transactional ods, then move it to another infocube. Now we will have the infocube with figures and dates, and the customer needs to maintain just one CKF "A".
After trying this out we've encountered following issue:
Since the query will run periodically we must use a time period filter (in fact - variable on a time characteristic - APD is not working with filter) to select CKF valid for this month for example.
The query in APD can work with variables only via query variants.
Now, the question is how to change the query variant automatically?
We can not force the customer to create new query variants each month for dozens of reports.
We plan to integrate APD in the process chain (although we haven't check how it works), where the query variant will be changed using a program.
so please advice:
1) is there any function module to change query variants in the background
2) which tables contain the query variant, so we can change it using abap
3) may be you can suggest other options to make it work
thank you
Message was edited by:
        Northern

Answer 1

Hi,
here it is.
write this code in SE38.
REPORT  ZDATE_CAL..
DATA: itab_tvarvc like tvarvc,
      l_date like sy-datum,
      l_monthyear_low type /BI0/OICALMONTH,
      l_monthyear_high type /BI0/OICALMONTH,
      l_day(2) type c,
      l_month(2) type c,
      l_year(4) type c,
      l_mandt(3) TYPE c VALUE '010',
      l_type(1) type c VALUE 'S',
      l_numb(4) type N value '0000'.
      l_day = sy-datum+6(2).
      l_month = sy-datum+4(2).
      l_year = sy-datum+0(4).
      concatenate l_day l_month l_year into l_date.
      concatenate '01' l_year into l_monthyear_low.
      concatenate l_month l_year into l_monthyear_high.
variable for current month interval
itab_tvarvc-mandt = l_mandt.
itab_tvarvc-name  = 'ZDATE_INV'.
itab_tvarvc-type  = l_type.
itab_tvarvc-numb  = l_numb.
itab_tvarvc-sign  = 'I'.
itab_tvarvc-opti  = 'BT'.
itab_tvarvc-low   = l_monthyear_low.
itab_tvarvc-high  = l_monthyear_high.
update TVARVC from itab_tvarvc.
This code will always maintain the entry for the variable 'ZDATE_INV' as range from the start of month till current month.
you can modify it store anything yuou want.
Now when creating the variant by clicking the create variant option when running the query.
you have the option in the "selection variable" column here you will find only TVARVC table as option select it and then in "name of variable" use the Z variable you have just created.
This will automatically pick the current value for the variant for that variable.
So anytime the variant is used in any of the scheduling it will pick the inout from here.
make sure that the variable for time interval is of same type as that of the entry in the TVARVC table.
That if it is of type calmonth then TVARVC table should have variable entry of type calmonth.
thanks