Master data maintenance in BPS

Question

Hi,
Does anyone has implemented a BPS layout to maintain masterdata ?? I know this is a overkill ...what are the settings to be made to info objects for it to accept the masterdata ???
Any suggestions is eagerly awaited,
regs
D Bret

Answer 1

Folks,
I've had this requirement in one shape or another at least on 3 projects now.
Mary, the FM you specified (UPC_BW_MASTER_DATA_MAINTAIN) is a good one for GUI. I've tried it from the web and it gives you an error while trying to send data to the web. I think this would only work if you have a capability to embed GUI in the web. By the way, does anyone know how to do it without leaning on portal? Can it be done in fact?
To go ahead and do some master data creation/maintenance from the web i did the following:
1. Created as many infoobjects with no master data or texts as there're attributes/texts (s/m/l) for a master record. This would also include the key, e.g. internal order. None would have master data or texts.
2. On par with those i created, or used standard, a set of real attributes as well as the key char you want to maintain.
3. Created an infocube which would contain all infoobjects that don't have the master data. So that a user can populate them on the web.
4. Wrote an FM to read the values off those fields in the loop and update the master data tables with the real attributes/texts. There's a standard FM RSDMD_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES_TEXTS you'd have to call from your Z one. Just make sure you specify the right i_tabclass in parameters depending on whether you're updating attributes or texts.
5. The function to create/update the master record is a local planning sequence which, as soon as the record is created, deletes it from the cube. So the cube stays always empty. It's done so that no old saved requests would be included in the loop next time you run it.
There're few clumsy issues with this solution. First, you need to specify the key figure for the cube. I try to make it meaningful for the user, whereas in reality it's used for nothing. You actually have to put some kinda value there coz otherwise the line items with zeros in all KFs are not included in xth_data hashed table in the loop.
Then comes this inflexibility with being able to fully maintain the record, seeing it prior to calling it up. I managed to only create and update the record (if the same key is used, in this case, the FM just overwrites the old attributes/texts with the new ones).
Last but by far not least, once i created a master data value, on the next tab i want my variable to be auto-refreshed with a newly created MD value. Heck. You have to tweak and fool the system even here. But i'll write more about it in a separate discussion.
Final point. Dave, the client req you have is not an overkill. If i were a client, for Pete's sake, i'd be adamantly demanding this functionality. I believe, if we at SAP make a claim BPS can be used to plan at levels other than lowest level of master data in the R/3 system, then we better be ready to provide a user-controlled tool to create those master record values prior to entering plan data against those. And often a user doesn't know the master record attributes/texts and when they finally do, they need to plan against them the next minute. So no time for calling the IS team asking to load a file containing one record.
Cheers
Alex