ℹ This blog is just to inform developers and consultants who are not familiar or not following SCN space.
In last days, when reading the SCN Discussions and Blogs I realized that many developers and consultants have not realized the potential of WD ABAP and Floor plan manager. There have been few blogs and discussions where it has been advised to copy SAP Applications and application configurations to satisfy customer specific requirements (e.g. to hide a particular UI Block from personal profile or to change some customizing from ESS Menu). The biggest disadvantage due to this is corrections and improvements of configurations delivered by SAP which affect the original application will not reach the copied entities of your application. This is particularly important since SAP will add new content in enhancement packages and if you have always copied applications then this is more effort to adapt post installation of enhancement package (and I have to admit that there are no great tools that can tell what delta was changed in configurations across releases :sad: ).
WD ABAP and FPM provides various alternatives and simpler solutions in some use cases.
Following adaptation options are possible:
- Copy Application
- Enhancement
- Customizing and Personalizing
- Modification - Not really recommended
- Context-Based Adaptations (CBA)
First 3 are very interesting options from ESS/MSS perspective and you should always try to see if some basic things can be achieved in the customizing mode (or called as administrator mode using SAP-CONFIG-MODE = X). If that is not possible then decide to go for enhancement or deep copy application.
In case you need a very dynamic UI based on a backend context value (like MOLGA, EE Group) then you can consider CBA option
You will find detailed explanation of various adaptation options in SCN space.
Please read this important document http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-28799 also go through other documents like FPM developers cookbook.
Although the document is based on NW 7.31 release which is valid for enhancement package 6 you will find introduction of important concepts which are valid even if you are on enhancement package 5 level (NW 7.02 level)
