Since SAP still has not opened any Idea-Place-like site for the improvement suggestions, this place seems as good as any to start a wish list / rant combination.
And I'm not even talking about big stuff like why there is no version control for the forms or why there is no billing status for the orders in the delivery-related billing scenario or anything like that. It's the "small potatoes" that I bet would take SAP all but 5 lines of code and some goodwill to make work.
For example, in SE80 I right-click on the report and pick Create -> Transaction from the menu. Even though clearly I'm creating a transaction for a report (did I mention I right-clicked on it?), it's still proposing 'program and screen' transaction type. Oh-kay... But even after I chose the right transaction type why on earth can't SAP fill in the report name here?
Hmm, which program could this transaction be for... How about the one that I've just right-clicked on?! Ugh...
Accepted Solutions (1)
Answers (52)
The compiler is having a bad day and is tired of my crap. I think I finally sent it over the edge.
LOL Chris - it's the SAP equivalent of "umbrella... ella... ella". I've mentioned a similar case in another post ("Coded humor", I think). I've seen quite a few of those, not sure what's the deal there. I wonder if might know.
While I'm here, here is another good one. When creating the background jobs in SM36 and adding the steps, my own user ID is always proposed by default. But in Production we never use the personal user IDs in the steps. Yet instead of remembering the last user ID entered, every step is proposing my own again and again. It's rather annoying when creating large jobs.
Actually it would be nice to see some improvements in SM36 UI overall, those screens must have not changed since the 70s.
I know it's my own fault, but still. I don't click around, I just tab tab tab <object name> F7... can't be bothered clicking that damn radio button everytime.
I'm curious - are there no ABAPers that work for SAP who ever noticed this? It's not some kind of a customer issue, it affects anyone who uses ABAP Editor to create a transaction, including SAP's own employees. Do they also go "ugh!" when they see that (and do they have some internal forum to communicate "we should really fix this")? Or do they always use only SE93 or some kind of jedi mind trick to create transactions?
Meanwhile in the ABAP swamps... SE91 prompts for the target language for the translation of every message:
Had to translate about a dozen of messages to Spanish today and enter ES for every single one of them. We only have two languages for cripes sake. Is it so difficult to remember the last one used?
My favorite this week...Eclipse ADT, have an active working DDL/ABAP CDS view. click on CDS Navigator tab and get the message "CDS Navigator not available" Why? it works with some things but not others, and only when logged into a project. Where is the log about this? This is like the message "I dont know what happened...contact your system administrator" ...and I am the admin! //end gripe...
The other day I had to wear my SD hat and play around with some copy control settings. Exhibit A below shows the VTAA transaction where we can configure how one sales document type is copied to another. Many other config transactions look the same way.
There are tons of entries in the table and "Position..." button (what's the deal with ellipsis? something left unsaid?) at the bottom is supposed to help navigate it. If you click it, the "Another entry" pop-up appears. Hmm, do I use "SalesDoc Type" or "SalesDoc Type"? Decisions, decisions...
Well, thankfully it doesn't matter much because only one of them works anyway. If you put something in the first type field, it will take you to the entry where this type is in the "Target" column. So far so good. But if you leave the first field blank and put something in the second field then it does not take you to the entry where that value is in the "Source" column, as one might logically expect. In fact, it does absolutely nothing, you can click all you want. It's not going to tell you that it doesn't work if you don't put anything in the first "SalesDoc Type" and that there is no option to search by the Source column only. Bwahaha.
Good thing I'm not some helpless SD consultant but an ABAPer, so I go to SE16 and simply browse TVCPA table there, like a boss.
Hopefully "the guided configuration" will put an end to this nonsense. Or will it?
In VTAA the helpless SD consultants use selection-> by contents and get some meaningful results with a few more clicks.
Speaking about decisions, this is V/06 and it is from the same popup.
This is not even a rant/wish... I foolishly assumed that the German translation will be better than the English one... in the English version we get only one identical set of choices there and I always pick the wrong one.
Veselina Peykova wrote:
In VTAA the helpless SD consultants use selection-> by contents and get some meaningful results with a few more clicks.
Thanks for the tip! But OMG, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Good luck looking for "Source" there because it's now called "From SalesDoc Type". By this logic "Target" should be called "To SalesDoc Type" but who cares about the logic. (And I'm sure the labels like "Data transfer FPLA" totally make sense to an SD person. Or a human.)
Question: what happens if you enter the document type and click the green checkmark in this pop-up?
The correct answer is... ding-ding-ding... NOTHING! Nothing happens. Because you need to click "Choose" button. But wait, there is more: [+] and "Append" buttons do the same exact thing. Why?!
Back in the Bizarro world - in the infoset (SQ02) when trying to delete a table from the JOIN the following message appears:
... and the table does not get deleted. After trying deletion again and wondering whether I have gone insane (as doing the same thing and expecting a different result would clearly indicate) I realized the message just needed to be translated from SAPanese. Apparently in English this means that the table fields are used in a field group and first need to be deleted from there. Quite silly of me to expect that deleting table from infoset altogether would take care of that (or at least provide accurate information on the action expected from the user).
I have just come up with four things which annoy the hell out of me in my day to day work and could be fixed in minutes by SAP development. That is never going to happen, but I thought I would share anyway.
When I create a database table, the system will moan and groan during activation if I do not choose an "enhancement category". So I take the menu option to choose one and what do I get?
That takes the biscuit for stupid messages. A message to tell you that you have not yet done the thing that you are attempting to do, and that message never appears UNLESS you are trying to do that right thing.
If you do not do the right thing you can save with no warning at all. Is that crazy, or am I?
Next, if I have ten transport requests open, because I am working on ten things at the same time, and I take the option to choose a transport request - what do I get?
A tiny box, which highlights the numbers (the meaningless bit) and my name (which I already know, hopefully most developers know their own name and in this context you only get your own transport request) but truncates the text (the important bit). SAP has a fixation with numbers and GUIDS and hexadecimal strings. Does the enormous amount of hexadecimal numbers in an ST22 dump ever help anybody? If so, can someone tell me how? Anyway, how long would it take someone at SAP to make that box wider? I could do it myself in ten seconds but that would be a "repair" and hence naughty.
Next, if you have a custom table, and you want to be able to maintain it via SM30 (like in the IMG) then after creating the table maintenance, you might like to give a specific transaction to maintain just this table rather than giving users blanket access to SM30.
So you create a Parameter transaction, and at the bottom, what do you get?
A little box, thinner than a super-model, and when you try to enter values suddenly you cannot see both fields at once. That is such a pain. Once again, how long would it take to make the box wider so us developers do not have to keep scrolling from left to right, never knowing what row we are on?
Lastly, I note that when creating a view cluster, on save you are firstly warned if you have not chosen a "compare flag". Then if you choose one, and save again you get another warning this time telling you that you have chosen a compare flag. I am sure both warnings are valid, but if you pop seemingly stupid warnings (i.e. two choices, both seemingly wrong) in peoples face they just ignore them.
Anyway, good to get that off my chest. When "idea place" came out all those years ago I thought that would be just the place to report things like this, but I quickly learned that ABAP ideas (ideas that help developers) just got laughed out of the room.
Cheersy Cheers
Paul
Oh yes, and when creating a view cluster, whatever name you give it you get the following message:-
Last I heard I was allowed to create tings starting with Z.
And then if I decide to cancel and not go through with creating it - I can't get off the screen. The BACK, CANCEL and EXIT icons all have the same effect as pressing the CREATE button. You have to blank out the cluster name and then you can leave.
I have come late to this game, but I have to say I laughed my way through the majority of the content this morning after it was bumped with a comment. This one has always annoyed me... doesn't the "Pass IDoc Immediately" imply a package size of 1 given the definition?
Please... just put the listboxes/dropboxes here and other appropriate places already
And generally (since there is no easy editable SALV...), I don't know how "easily" it would be done in Dynpro/Table control legacy (probably not that easy), but there are more than 10 years worth of questions on ABAP forum as to how to set up dynamic (differing from line to line) listboxes on Table Control columns... Some are even pretending that there is a solution, but nothing seems to work.
Jānis B wrote:
Please... just put the listboxes/dropboxes here and other appropriate places already 
On the other hand, it may prevent easy cut&paste...
Matthew Billingham wrote:
How hard is it to scan all uses of FOR ALL ENTRIES and see if there is any code that doesn't check for empty driver table, and that really is the desired functionality?
My 2 cents ...
You can define a "custom" code inspector variant which checks the following:
- Can FAE be replace by better performing JOIN?
- Are the relevant checks for empty driver table in FAE implemented?
The standard CI check variant 'DEFAULT' doesn't include these checks.
BR,
Suhas
PS: I am working on an ABAP740 SP12 system
In the ABAP editor (SE80), CTRL+D doubles a line. So far so good. But what happens, if you select a bunch of lines and then press CTRL+D?
Beautiful, isn't it?
I happen to tap into this trap almost every day...
Juwin,
I am pretty sure there is a field for exchanging data in the cl_gui_frontend_services=>clipboard_export as well as the import.
As far as rants, I guess this is not one...
Raghu
S4/HANA - condition contract customizing:
Two vertical scrolls in a non-resizable popup... with absolutely unhelpful selection options - here is the actual screen:
Yes, I know, I can use SE16 to check which of all 773 standard conditions are relevant for a certain option, but this does not look like an improvement over what I can see in older SAP releases.
Went to create a maintenance view for a Z table in SE11 today. I just wanted to add a description for one of the key fields from the related text table. It's been a while and I almost forgot what a treat that is.
On the Table/Join tab you can enter one table and there is an "informative" message in blue saying something about the relationships. It seemed like one of those fortune cookies that sound more like a mission statement, so I just ignored it and proceeded to click on the [+] button. At that point the message appeared at the bottom saying that tables must be linked with foreign key.
That part confused the heck out of me since I already added foreign key in the Z table definition. Surprisingly, the message did not go away after clicking on [+] button few more times. Oh well, I guess I'll have to read the long text:
Tables in the maintenance view have to be linked with foreign key
Message no. E2316
Diagnosis
The join conditions for maintenance views are derived from a foreign key relationship. For this reason, it is only possible to select a table together with a foreign key relationship.
It is only possible to delete a join condition by deleting the corresponding table.
It is only possible to add a table or a join condition with the function 'Relationships'.
Uhm, what? What is this "function" you speak of?
Some of you might already be ROTFLMAOing at this point, but keep in mind that the screenshot above was photoshopped to remove blank lines. On my 24" desktop monitor the Relationships button was not even in my line of sight. But after wandering around the menus and some head scratching I did find it finally. (What genius decided to put it there, away from all other controls?)
Why can't the blue message simply say "Click Relationships button to add more tables"? Why does the long text call the button "function"? Why are other buttons even available if they don't work? Why can't +/- buttons simply open the same pop-up as the Relationship button and avoid this whole dance altogether?
I'm wondering if anything has changed in this area since 7.31 and, if not, this goes right on my wish list.
It's not unusual (especially in DEV/QA) to go to SM37, check the job that's been completed and then have a sudden desire to schedule the same job but with a different variant or some other minor change.
What happens right now is I go to SM37 and am presented with this default screen:
Of course, here I just hit Enter because I want to check if my job ran successfully.
On the next screen, I see that the job is finished, so now I want to schedule it again and just put a different variant in the step. AFAIK this can be done only using the menu Job->Copy .
That's cool, but this menu only prompts me to enter the new job name:
After clicking Copy, it just takes you to the previous job list where you can only see the same, already finished job. Hey, what the heck happened? Well, it's because the Copy command only creates new job definition with "Scheduled" status and silly me did not check the "Sched." checkbox on the first screen (see above). So now I can't see the copied job unless I go back and check the checkbox.
The thing I don't understand: why can't the Copy command just open the job definition (in SM36) and let me make changes at once? Wouldn't it be the natural next step? Why would I just create a copy and leave it out there? Is there some trick around this that I'm not aware of? This whole "screen dance" is rather annoying.
Also am I the only one who feels that calling it "Scheduled" status make no sense? When someone says "the fireworks are scheduled to occur on July 4th" everyone knows that, unless something happens, the fireworks will occur! No one would understand this as "the fireworks will not occur on July 4th if not released before that". But the "scheduled" status for the SAP jobs actually means that only a job definition was created. And the job is not going to run until it's released. The status should be Defined / Planned / Pending or something like that. In any case, don't call "scheduled" the job that ain't gonna happen. Pretty please.
Jelena Perfiljeva wrote:
......
It's not even caught by syntax check, you get it as a surprise short dump at runtime!
......
Please someone tell me this is fixed in 7.4 or 7.5 or at least S/4HANA.
We are on 7.4, SP10. This is a syntax error in our system.
So, if I try to use cast, that also gives syntax error... why is that?
Thanks,
Juwin
Message was edited by: Juwin Pallipat Thomas
Why can't the License renewal app search on SID?
As someone who has the SIDs with their installation numbers on a sticky note pinned to the cubicle wall I might not be able to relate . But for me the shiny new Launchpad does search by the system ID quite well.
I just typed a system ID in the big Search box on top. It did offer me to search for it specifically in Systems and when I picked that option it showed full info on that system, including installation # in two places:
If you have two different user IDs for SCN and S-user the wouldn't you get prompted for which certificate you want to use when sign-on kicks in? I have only one S-user and one certificate, so I even disabled the prompt in the browser settings and it works perfectly. Perhaps you'll find comfort in knowing that, unlike me, at least you won't lose your SCN profile if you change jobs.
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