Customizing SAP: Excerpt from Practical Guide to SAP ABAP Part 2 Performance, Enhancements, Transports

Excerpt from Practical Guide to SAP ABAP Part 2: Performance, Enhancements, Transports by Thomas Stutenbäumer.

Customizing SAP
Most of the installation-specific settings in an SAP system are done as part of the customizing. This task is usually done by the person responsible for the module and not by the ABAP developer. The developer is often asked to investigate any causes of errors. It is often the case that errors are caused by insufficient or missing customizing settings. Therefore, the ABAP developer must know the basic principles of customizing settings. 

All customizing activities are stored in customizing tables. In one SAP system there are almost 30,000 such tables (check with the database table DD02L and the search criteria CONTFLAG = C).

In SAP systems you have to make a distinction between:

• Client-independent customizing: the settings are valid for all clients in the SAP system
• Client-specific customizing: the settings are only valid for the SAP client in which they are defined.

All customizing tables that do not contain the data element MANDT or CLIENT are client-independent (e.g., table T100 for messages). Customizing tables that do contain one of these data elements as their first field are client-specific (e.g., table T001 for company codes).

Exception to the rule
Table T000 (SAP clients) contains the data element MANDT but the records of this table are valid for all clients of the SAP system. The rule referred to above does
not always apply!

From a technical perspective, the customizing is done by the insertion, deletion, or change of records in customizing tables. The data changes are performed using table maintenance transactions or table maintenance views. When you change the content of a customizing table, a customizing transport request is created. When such requests are transported from the development system into the production system via the test system, changes to the content of customizing tables are transferred
to the subsequent SAP systems. An exception to this method is the current settings (see Section 5.2).

5.1 Transaction SPRO
If the name of the relevant customizing table of the customizing view is known, the information required can be entered using transaction SM30 (Table Maintenance). Compared to transaction SM30, transaction SPRO (Customizing: Execute Project) has the great advantage that the user does not have the risk of missing important customizing settings. Transaction SPRO provides a menu guide for certain subjects for customizing settings.

SAP provides the implementation guides for the introduction of certain functions and modules. These written guidelines are very helpful documentation for the complete and correct customizing of new SAP functions or modules.

Figure 5.1: Transaction SPRO

With transaction SPRO, you can create customer-specific projects (see Figure 5.1 – PROJECT_1). You can adopt certain customizing settings to these projects from the complete SAP Reference IMG (SAP reference implementation guide) and also assign different users to these projects.
If there is no project on the CUSTOMIZING: EXECUTE PROJECT screen, you have to use the SAP Reference IMG. Click to display the customizing functionalities of all implemented SAP modules (see Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2: SAP implementation guide (IMG)

Keep reading in Practical Guide to SAP ABAP Part 2: Performance, Enhancements, Transports by Thomas Stutenbäumer.

This book offers a comprehensive practical guide to SAP ABAP development for ABAP professionals. Part 2 explores program performance, authorizations, error analysis, corrections, and SAP Transport Management along with how to tailor SAP applications. Dive into performance analysis and get tips on using the performance trace and ABAP runtime analysis. Walk through the tools available to enhance standard SAP applications such as the Modification Assistant, user exits, business add-ins (BAdIs), and the Enhancement Framework. Identify techniques for authorization management and find out how SAP ABAP developers can impact data protection. Obtain best practices for identifying the cause of application errors. Get step-by-step instructions for transports and learn how to correct errors. By using practical examples, tips, and screenshots, the author brings readers up to speed on the fundamentals of SAP ABAP development.

– Developer influence on performance
– SAP access and account management techniques
– Modifications and enhancements to SAP standard
– SAP Transport Management System

Author Thomas Stutenbäumer has worked for more than 25 years as an IT professional for public utilities. After his study of mathematics at Westfälischen-Wilhelms Universität in Münster, Germany he was responsible for the reorganization of the IT organization of a medium-sized public utility. He has worked for different professional organizations, published articles on the applications of new information technologies and appeared as a speaker at utility industry events. For more than 10 years, he has developed ABAP programs and has modified standard SAP code since 2013 has been a senior consultant at the enterprise ConUti GmbH.