Dollar char at start of an SFC makes SAP behave strange

[Former Member]

Hi,

According to Note 1363812, the dollar character should be allowed in the Key field of SAP ME.

In our 6.0.3.4 environment we have tested an SFC like $EBE1234.

The reports As built summary and SFC report have an empty SFC column. And if you want to drill down i.e with SFC step detail you get an

error for trying to search for an empty SFC.

Activity log report seem to work okay though.

I have only tested a few things with $ character, but it seems kind of buggy..

Should Dollar character work in SAP ME?

Br,

Johan

[former_member182330 · Accepted solution]

Hello Johan,

I believe key words in the note are   "in maintenance GUIs". Therefore SFC names could be still limited and $ char may not be used. I wouldn't be surprised as $ char can be used in SQL queries in LIKE clause.

UPD: from the note - Note 2: the # (number/pound/hash sign) character is supported in the "SFC" and "Inventory ID" fields of SAP ME 5.2 SP07 patch 7 and later versions of SAP ME 5.2

... meaning that $ is not supported.

Konstantin

[sergiy_katerinich · Accepted solution]

Johan,

This "note #2" was added by me just a month ago. I confirm that the main idea of Note 1363812 was about key fields of Maintenance Activities.

As concerns transactional data like SFCs and Inv IDs, there was a special effort to introduce some changes which were mentioned as separate "note #" sections at the bottom of the Note. So they are rather an exception from the general rule. It means that $ sign is not allowed for SFCs yet. However, as I've heard, the special project is in the pipeline to align the legal char set of ME to the one of ERP.

Regards,

Sergiy

[former_member210324 · Accepted solution]

Hi Sergiy,

is there any news about having a $ sign in the SFC?

Is there a general document of what is allowed?

Kind Regards,

Christoph

[sergiy_katerinich · Accepted solution]

Sorry, Christoph, but I have not heard about this yet.

I'll try to check.

[sergiy_katerinich · Accepted solution]

In general, the situation seems to remain the same. That means no efforts have been made to certify usage of $ sign in transactional data.

Moreover, there is at least one case where $ sign causes issue in the API call. So, this still needs further discussion.

I will keep you updated.

[sergiy_katerinich · Accepted solution]

Hi Christoph!

I has been agreed to extend supportability of special characters for SFC field also. So, please submit any issue on this matter if any observed.

The Note will be updated accordingly.

Regards,

Sergiy

[former_member210324 · Accepted solution]

Hi Sergiy,

currently the findSfcsByRefs method from the PAPI for the SfcStateService interface has issues with this.

There is an incident logged as: 1016712 to this issue.

Kind Regards,

Christoph

[alexander_teslyuk]

Hi Johan,

It sounds like a bug to me and I would log a support ticket.

Regards,

Alex.