Mass Maintenance (MM17) - updating MARC-MMSTA creates Sales Views?

[Former Member]

Hi all,

I have searched the discussion boards but was unable to find an existing post that relates to my issue. Our issue is this:

We are using transaction MM17 (mass maintenance) to obsolete materials at both the plant level (marc-mmsta) and material level (mara-mstae). The update is being done in two steps, first the MARA materials are marked obsolete, and then the same materials are marked obsolete in the MARC table.

After the mass update is finished we review the status of the updates. (MM03 -> enter material/plant -> Environment -> display changes) We are finding that some of the materials, even though they are NOT sellable materials, are being given a "V" value (Sales) to both the Maintenance Status (MARA-VPSTA) and the Maintenance Status (MARA-PSTAT). This is occuring, according to the "Display Changes" log in MM03 at the same time the Plant-Specific material status is changed to "obsolete".

This is not happening to all of our materials that are updated, but there seems to be no pattern to why some of them are. Please any help would be appreciated.

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

This problem is caused by the program design

The mass maintenance functions ABAP dictionary-oriented, that means new creation via mass maintenance creates new records on the database. You can change existing records via mass maintenance, in the creation mode the system does not select existing records.

The creation of views in the material master on the other hand is not ABAP dictionary-oriented but maintains initial fields of already existing records.

see Note 581542 - MM17: Change material mastr maintnance status (create views)

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply.

Can you please further explain on what you mean, which is stated in note 581542:

"The creation of views in the material master on the other hand is not ABAP dictionary-oriented but maintains initial fields of already existing records."

Does this simply imply that although the fields do not have values assigned to them, the mass-maintenance will maintain them and ultimately assign them to a maintenance view?

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

Does this simply imply that although the fields do not have values assigned to them, the mass-maintenance will maintain them and ultimately assign them to a maintenance view?

this is what I understand from this note.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Can anyone explain why the views and/or fields are maintained even though we do not want that?

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

SAP answered this question in the OSS note as technical design.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

But why on some materials but not all? thanks for replies...

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

what is the common thing of some? this probably defines the answe.

materials of the same material type?

materials with certain views maintained?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

It is difficult to distinguish any consistencies to the materials being updated other than the fact that in transaction MM90, for the materials that are having the sales view added, an error is displayed saying that "direct input cannot be maintained in online mode therefore it could not be overwritten with the initial value"

Hope this is of some help as materials are continually being given a sales view. Thanks.

[Former Member]

Our MM17 process was modified to update on a material type by material type basis and sales views are no longer being created. Thanks to all for their input.