SAP database tables documentation.

While SAP doesn’t provide real technical documentation, you can still do a lot to get the information about SAP data model and the sources of data for your programs. I have written a short guide once describing many tricks you can do if you have no idea where the data is coming from. It is published as one of the articles in the ABAP Knowledge Corner from Richard Harper. Apart from that, lots of information is stored right in the SAP system, as standard documentation for programs, functions and ABAP Dictionary objects. For the function modules’, the best way is to use the www.se37.com – a searchable library of documentation. If you want to (try to) get a document from SAP for a database table, here’s the trick: you run the report RSSDOCTB, select the output to be printed on screen and in the popup window (coming after F8 – Run) check all the checkboxes to get the documentation not only for the table but also for relationships and data elements. If you are lucky enough, meaning that normally all older tables (master data and core transaction data tables) are more or less documented, you get a report looking similar to the sample below, that can be stored in a local file. Long time ago I even wrote a program that reprocessed the resulting file into HTML to produce hyperlinked version for many tables.

        MARC                Material Master: C Segment
        Application class     MG
        Table class           TRANSP      SQL-Tabelle
        Last change by        SAP         Date         04/09/1996
        ______________________________________________________________________
        Technical settings
        data class:           APPL0       size category:4
        buffering type:
        ______________________________________________________________________
        Table structure

        Field name K Type Length Data el.  Domain     Text
        ______________________________________________________________________

        MANDT      X CLNT 3      MANDT     MANDT      Client
        MATNR      X CHAR 18     MATNR     MATNR      Material number
        WERKS      X CHAR 4      WERKS     WERKS      Plant
        PSTAT        CHAR 15     PSTAT     PSTAT      Maintenance status
        LVORM        CHAR 1      LVOWK     XFELD      Deletion flag for all material data of a
                                                      plant
        BWTTY        CHAR 1      BWTTY     BWTTY      Valuation category
        XCHAR        CHAR 1      XCHAR     XFELD      Batch management indicator (internal)
        MMSTA        CHAR 2      MMSTA     MMSTA      Material status from MM/PP view
        MMSTD        DATS 8      MMSTD     DATUM      Date as from which MM/PP status is
                                                      valid (deactivated)
        MAABC        CHAR 1      MAABC     MAABC      ABC indicator

...

        Relationships

        Field name Checks fromDependencyCardinality   Text
        ______________________________________________________________________

        MANDT      T000       KEY      CN             Client
        MATNR      MARA       KEY      CN
        WERKS      T001W      KEY      CN
        BWTTY      T149C      REF      CN
        MMSTA      T141       REF      CN
        EKGRP      T024       REF      CN
        AUSME      T006       REF      CN             Unit of measure
        DISPR      MDIP       REF      CN             MRP profile
        DISMM      T438A      REF      CN             MRP type
        DISPO      T024D      REF      CN             Disponent
        DISLS      T439A      REF      CN             Lot size

...

Data element   BESKZ          Domain BESKZ
        _______________________________________________________________________
        Procurement type

        Definition

              Indicator that defines how the material is procured. The following
              procurements types are possible:

              o  The material is produced in-house.

              o  The material is procured externally.

              o  The material can be both produced in-house and procured externally.

        Checks

              Lower limit Upper limitValue description
        __________________________________________________________________
              E                      In-house production
              F                      External procurement
              SPACE                  No procurement
              X                      Both procurement types