Excel – Ignore blanks and duplicates in Validation list

I faced a problem where I had a worksheet where in column A there were items I wanted to use as source for validation list in another column. But these items were not unique, therefore they appeared in the validation list not just once. So I used the solution presented below to automatically create a unique list in a spare column and assign that list as the source of data validation drop down list for a specified cell range Continue reading

ABAP – Advanced debugging

SAPI believe that most of you know how to debug the basic report or class methods etc.

But things can become complicated when debugging is needed for a backround job, RFC function module or even some user-exit which is being triggered in an update task. E.g. when you update material master in ECC using MM02, you can’t easily debug all user-exits because they’re triggered in separate process independent on session you are currently running.

In this article I’d like to present several useful debugging tricks you can use in your more complex scenarios. Continue reading

ABAP – Debug CIF interface from ECC to APO

SAPIt it (almost) impossible to debug CIF interface on inbound side because the data being sent from ECC to APO is passed via RFC enabled functions which are called “remotely” from ECC. Therefore it is not possible to just put break point in target (APO) system and expect that debugger will start when you send data from source (ECC) system. Continue reading

LFTP – Backup website over FTP

LinuxI was facing task how to schedule an automatic backup/mirror of a website which allows connecting over FTP. PHP command exec was forbidden by the provider so it was not possible to run OS commands. PHP script execution time was set to quite short time so it was neither possible to zip using PHP functions and send the whole backup file somewhere easily. Continue reading

ABAP – Treating different number formats

SAPYou might face a problem when users have number format set differently in their user profiles (TCode SU01, table USR01). By default there are 3 formats available and this can cause troubles when processing user entered data and converting it into internal SAP DB format. Continue reading

ABAP – Export Transport request to local file system

SAPAll development or customizing in SAP is written into a transport request unless it is a local object not intended to be transported ($TMP package). Sometimes it might be useful to backup your development but in SAP this task is quite complicated to export all programs, classes, standard texts, …

Therefore there is an option to export the whole development encapsulated on a transport request level. And that’s what this article is about – exporting development encapsulated in a transport request to local file system. Continue reading

ABAP – Validation of manual input

SAPI faced a scenario where I had an ALV grid where all columns were made generic of type (let’s make it simple) CHAR255. Each column has its name in field catalog in format TABNAME-FIELDNAME (+ more human readable column header texts of course). What I needed to achieve was to make validation of data that user entered in the ALV cells. Since the cell validation is not available by default (because of type CHAR255) I had to make it dynamically.
In this article I’d like to share my solution Continue reading