Characteristic of Data Type = Date follows User Profile Only

[Former Member]

Hi All

In EHS SVT the characteristic TSCAList_Date [SAP_EHS_1023_053_DATE_LIST] is of Data Type = Date) and follows the date format defined in the User Profile of actual user.

If a user is using EU profile such as:

EU date format = 1 DD.MM.YYYY

EU decimal notation format = 1.234.567,89

If he enters a date in another format (Such as YYYY-MM-DD - 2010-03-27) than the one defined in the User Profile (DD.MM.YYYY - 27.03.2010); he will get an error message text: "Value (&) is not numeric"

Question:

How he can bypass this error and allow SAP make the conversion to changing the date entered (2010-03-27) to the one used in the User profile (27.03.2010)?

I will apreciate any Help

KO

[Former Member]

Hi Christopher

Thank you for your respond. I want only to add that the EHS data we are using is coming from an EHS data provider (from Canada) where this provider is using North America format for "date" and "numeric".

Best Regards

Ouadria

[christoph_bergemann]

Hello Ouadria,

there are many "types" of data provider: my understanding is know that you have received a document (e.g in Word) having the data in it and you try to enter the data manually using cg02?

or is it more like an EXCEL File or whatsover? In this case you have some other options.

If the data you receive is "ASCII" based (or whatsover format which can be processed "more" easily) you could think of "external" parser which generate an e.g. input data file which can be used in EH&S Standard import

IN any case: if your SAP GUI log on paramater are different (in sense of Date format etc.) you can not enter the data using the original format and the use of a second user id (or the other proposals) is really an options to go on without great efforts.

May be (don't know exactly) you could try to use one of the userExits which are there. In Customizing there is one userExit connected to a "check" function routine which can be used (if I remember correct) for properties of type A (only characteristics). I believe that the user exit will be used in the "save" operation (or may be during the "neter" event). Now using this userexit it might be possible to "change" on the fly the data you have entered to the data format which is needed. I would really not invest the money here because you need really a good technical concept.

With best regards

C.B.

Edited by: Christoph Bergemann on Nov 25, 2010 8:56 PM

Edited by: Christoph Bergemann on Nov 25, 2010 8:56 PM

Edited by: Christoph Bergemann on Nov 28, 2010 2:08 PM

[Former Member]

HI Christoph,

I know this is an older thread, but it is the exact topic I wanted to question. My company, as a data provider of OCC, is also running into this problem. The data provided to EHS OCC is in the format of an XML file (like other content providers I would imagine).

This particular characteristic is mapped as follows, for example:

          <TextVal ID="TSCAList_Date">20121912</TextVal>

So you see we provide the date in the YYYYMMDD format.

If I, as an OCC user, have my default date parameter set up as DD.MM.YYYY, then when I load this value, it is incorrectly converted to something else out of this millenium. With the way we provide it, the only user formats that seem to be compatible are the three formats YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY.MM.DD or YYYY/MM/DD. If I set the default to DD.MM.YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY, the last two fail ("month entered is incorrect", because it is tryign to force "20" into the month), and the first one doesn't give error but thinks it is Dec 20, 1912.)

It seems odd to me that a data provider would have no option to make their date more "universally accepted" to SAP. It almost seems like whatever date format we pick, the customer then needs to set their default setting somewhat similar.

In other parts of the XML file, it IS possible to specify a universal date, for example when dating the actual record itself:

<Instance UniqueID="TSCASVT:1570929" Sort="0" Active="YES" LitSource="ZUS_T8AIUR" DD="12" MM="11" YYYY="2012">

BUT when an actual characteristic needs to store a date, this is where it fails. I cannot simply change the data tag to something like this, it doesn't work:

          <TextVal ID="TSCAList_Date" YYYY="2012" DD="19" MM="12"></TextVal>

I was thinking about how a DAT file looks that would contain this. When I look at the DAT file, SAP makes it very clear what the date formats are, by specifying the following in the header of the DAT file:

+DF      DD.MM.YYYY

In the XML file, you do not have that option, so it's almost like there is no way to tell SAP what sort of date you are passing to it.

[christoph_bergemann]

Dear Scott

please start new thread. OCC is discussed not very often here. In any case: we are not using OCC; but OCC is nothing else as an "userexit" which calls an ABAP function module which calls the OCC "locally" (according to what I know about the process).

The OCC process "on high" level is "nothing" else in comparison to standard import. You have a file; the file contains data according to a rule; the file is "parsed" the data is extracted by SAP and then store in the relevant SAP EHS tables.

To my knowledge "Date" and "Times" are stored in a "standard" way in database by SAP. This data is retrieved and based on user set up (SAP GUI) it is displayed in SAP GUI according toi the "local" rules (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD or whatever format).

Regarding the interaction of SAP GUI with SAP database (EHS): there are a lot of stories to write down there you can get "problems" wiht the user profile. But this is a different story.

C.B.

May be: consolut - EHS_MD_300_50 - Eintrag in der Sekundärdatenermittlung für EH&amp;amp;S OCC erweitern (sorry I found only german version)

May be refer to:

SAP EHS DISCUSSIONS !!!!: SAP EH&amp;S 3rd Party Data content and its usage

I just executed a "dump" research and hey. There is a patent in place: http://www.google.nl/patents/US7680803

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7680803.html

http://www.google.pl/patents/US20050283374

wow; I was not aware of this fact

Link

may be of interest too.

[christoph_bergemann]

Hello Ouadria

very interesting request indeed.

a.) my understanding of SAP GUI approach is: user has an user id and logon parameter

b.) by specifing an user profile some "default" set up should be used in further UI interaction in SAP GUI interface (especially date format etc.)

c.) Therefore it makes "no" sense to use a "different" format in entering a date etc. as specified in the user profile; in addition I believe the "look and feel" of the data (display and no maintain) is once again connected to the user profile, That means if you change the data in user profile the "date" format and "numeric" format should change in UI; this "change" should be active after saving the profile once again (regarding fonts etc. in UI: the change is done "immediate"; user profile changes is done in a further session and I believe the original session is not changed (not sure ..))

d.) indipendent on user profile the application makes sure that the data is written into the SAP internal format (date and numeric vlaue) into the tables

Coming with EH&S 2.7 you can use a new function in class/characteristic maintenance to change (display conversion in different allowed UOM) "UOMs" (etc.) and to get an idea which UOMs are allowed. I believe (not sure) that this new function should be available regarding characteristics of date format too. This function is "hidden" in some sense in the Menue (if I remember correct; i am not using it often).

May be you could think of a "tricky" way to use the user parametres (by preparing some programming) but I would not investigate the money (and time) but simple change the user profile enter the data and then change back the profile.

Different "easy" solution would be to use a second user id (one with default format DD.MM.YYYY and second with YYYY-MM-DD)

May be this helps

With best regards

C.B.

PS: Regarding UOM conversion: take a look here:

http://help.sap.com/erp2005_ehp_04/helpdata/en/c1/eda0f591ec12408b25e7a1b369ca45/frameset.htm

And search for topic: "Conversion of Units of Measurement" which can be found in "Editing Characteristic Values" which is subtopic of: "Value Assignment "

Edited by: Christoph Bergemann on Nov 19, 2010 10:08 PM

Edited by: Christoph Bergemann on Nov 19, 2010 10:11 PM