SAP ABAP Central: SAP Table Maintenance Tool

Whether it is a functional or technical transaction or a basis transaction, everything in SAP or for that matter in any technology, boils down to database, and as we know database means tables. Apart from the standard tables that SAP has, a business will usually have to create many ‘Z’ tables for its custom development. Many times a business ends up with hundreds of custom tables and always their maintenance is a real cause of concern as the usual maintenance tools in SAP have their own issues. Usually, a table in SAP can be maintained in three ways,

1.Through ‘SM30’ (Table Maintenance)

2.Through SE11

3.Via custom transaction.

The concerns with each of this are listed below:

1. Through ‘SM30’ (Table Maintenance)

Logs the changes (Tcode – SCU3), but doesn’t record the field specific changes clearly (check table ‘DBTABLOG’).
Not so easy to restrict authorizations for a particular table for each individual user.
The screen is a narrow container and the user interaction is not so comfortable especially when the table has many fields or has long text fields.
When there are many entries to be entered in the table, there is no option to upload the entries from an Excel or CSV etc.

2. Through SE11

Logs the changes (Tcode – SCU3), but doesn’t record the field specific changes clearly (check table ‘DBTABLOG’).
Poor security.
No option to upload.

3. Via a custom transaction

Requires developing a standalone program for each table which again is a problem as it ends up in hundreds of programs to maintain hundreds of tables.
Again, problems with maintaining authorizations for each table for an individual user.

My tool, ‘SAP Table Maintenance Tool’ called ‘ZTMTOOL’ is a solution to all the above concerns and makes the table maintenance simple and secure. Some of the features of this tool are:

1. Security:

Any table can be restricted or allowed for maintenance for any user just by adding an entry in a

table ( called ZTMT_MATRIX).

2. Change History:

All the changes (i.e., create,edit,delete) are logged into a table (called ZTMT_HISTORY).

3. Upload option:

Records can also be created in large numbers at once, just by uploading data as excel

or CSV formats.

4. Look and Feel:

All the maintenance can be done in a neat looking ALV Grid with a very easy user interaction.

5. Dynamic Selection:

A dynamic selection screen for any table to view desired entries based on selection criteria.

6. Flexible ALV output:

The ALV output displays the needed columns or fields as selected by the user.

7. Easy Maintenance:

Apart from the key fields, a user can just opt to view and maintain only the needed fields.

8. Long Text Fields:

Simple maintenance of long text fields (> 128 characters) in a popup window with a text editor.

How to implement this tool?

Download the source code attached (Sourcecode.txt).
Goto TCode ‘SE38’ and create a new program ‘ZTMTOOL’.
Copy and paste the code from the downloaded file ‘Sourcecode.txt ‘.
Activate and run it.
In the initial run, the program prompts a decision popup to create; the authorizations table for this tool called ‘ZTMT_MATRIX’, changes log table called ‘ZTMT_HISTORY’ and the Tcode ‘ZTMTOOL’. Program automatically creates all these objects once the user clicks on ‘Approve’. If denied, the program retries and prompts again for the next 4 runs.
A user has to be authorized to maintain a particular table by maintaining an entry in the authorizations table ‘ZTMT_MATRIX’. Authorizations can be maintained for each specific maintenance operation such as ‘Create’,’Change’, ‘Delete’, ‘Upload’ by setting the relevant flag as ‘Y’ or ‘N’. The additional flag ‘FLG_CHK’ in ‘ZTMT_MATRIX’ is to tell the program if domain/checktable validations needs to be considered. If this is set as ‘N’, no validations take place and one can enter any junk value into the table.

On how to use this tool go through the user manual below: