Find User-Exits and BAdIs in ABAP. Part 2

In the first post I gave a brief introduction of what are user-exits and BAdIs and what are for. This time I'm going to dive a little deeper on this issue.

As I wrote before when SAP is implemented in a company, it is often customized according to the business rules and procedures. This customizations consist in modifying the behaviour of transactions, change calculations, change screens and also adding or hiding data. SAP provides areas where the implementers can make this adjustments and prepare the system to work as the business requires.

I can tell only on my experience but as far as I'm concerned, SAP provides the best practices for the business, so, it is a great opportunity for the company to follow this work methodolgy. That is why SAP is very specialized tool and needs experienced functional users to manage this situations.

There are other configurations that can be made that are not necessarily user-exits or BAdIs, for example, it is possible to re-arrange screens and create code specifically address to a field or procedure. This configurations can be made through transaction 'OMT3B' in the case of material master data screen in the Retail version. This kind of configurations are beyond the scope of this post, however if you need more information you can go to SAP for more information.

One thing before I continue; in the big picture, every standard modification is known as user-exit, so to say, a screen-exit, BTE, VFOM and a BAdI all are considered as it.

Ok, once it is identified the transactions and programs to be enhanced it is necessary to look for those user-exits and/or BAdIs. So, how do we find them?

Well, there are some transactions and techniques that can help, I personally use three ways and it depends what I'm trying to do:

For the first option is necessary to identify the package of the programs using transaction 'SE93' or in the menu System / Status.

Transaction 'SE93' is used to create/modify/display transactions in SAP and provides among other information the name of the program and package it belongs, the same for the menu option.

1. Execute transaction 'SE93', type in transaction code the value 'MM01' and then click the button 'Display'.

2. Copy the package name.

3. Execute transaction 'SMOD'.

4. Click on text box 'Enhancement' and press key 'F4'.

5. Click button 'Information System' and then paste the package name in the text box 'Package'.

6. Finally press 'Enter' and it will appear the list of user-exits of that package.

To find BAdIs is a little more tricky because you need to debug the program or transaction. Follow the following instructions:

1. Execute transaction 'SE24'.

2. Type in the text box 'Object type' the class name 'CL_EXITHANDLER' and then click button 'Display'.

3. Double click the method 'GET_INSTANCE'.

4. Set a break point after 'get_class_name_by_interface'. The 'class_name' parameter is the value we are interested in.

5. Now, open another session and execute the transaction you want to be analyzed. If there's a BAdI then a debugging window will rise up in the breakpoint you set in the latter step.

6. Check the 'class name'. Then press F8 and when pauses in the same breakpoint then there it is another BAdI and then successively.

Fortunately you don't have to set the breakpoint in the 'CL_EXITHANDLER' at the beginning of a transaction, you can make it at any moment, for example, when clicking to save in a transaction.

Both techniques are good and practical however, there's an another even more practical way and is quicker than the other ones. There are several free abap code in the internet that you can use to find both user-exits and BAdIs.

You can find a very good one here. http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/Snippets/Find+User-exits,+BADIs,+BTEs,+Etc+by+TCode+or+Program

As a side note, I know is faster to use the ABAP program however, it is necessary to learn to find these enhancements using the first two options because sometimes these programs can't see all these exits, so make your homework to be sure.

On the next post I'll show how to implement a user-exit.

Hope it helps.

Find User-Exits and BAdIs in ABAP. Part 1

In my beginnings with SAP I remember that I discovered these excellent features named 'user-exits' and 'BAdIs'. These concepts are very strong traits in SAP because they let you change the behaviour or the appearance of a program or transaction according to you necessity.

Most of the time when SAP is installed and implemented, usually the company customize some business areas, for example, the business requires to add an extra field to a screen, set a default value in a data, apply a new hierarchy of taxes, round a quantity and others, and all these enhancements are achieved through these 'doors', so to speak.

The user-exits and BAdIs focus on the same issue however they are implemented differently and all are set by SAP, in other words, SAP defines where this user-exits and BAdIs work in the system. The key here is to identify and apply them, so, if we want to modify the standard behaviour of some transaction, the path to follow is to find out if we can apply a user-exits or BAdIs.

A question to follow the latter is; what is the difference between those concepts if they do the same thing? Well, the answer is that BAdIs are the new way of applying user-exits and are more related to the object oriented design of the late version of SAP SAP R/3 a few years ago.

This doesn't mean that user-exits are deprecated, however in future upgrades of SAP we will see more BAdIs implemented specially on new transactions.

There are other ways to change SAP in order to make it behaves as we want, these are the 'enhancements' and 'modifications'. Enhancements are standard modifications at the top or bottom of a form where you can code and switch some values. These can be modified and deleted anytime.

The modifications consists in changing directly the standard code of SAP, but at this stage, you need to ask pemission to SAP communicating what are you going to change and then SAP will give an authorization code that will be registered in its logs, so, SAP will know that you are going to change the standard source code and also where are you making it. 

As you may imagine, these last ones should be the last resource to make because, depending on the transaction and unless you know exactly what are you doing, you are taking a big risk here. You are potentially exposing yourself to make a disaster on the implementation and if you do that, SAP will not take responsability on this issue. So, I would not recommend to follow this path to anyone unless, as I told you, you know exactly what you're doing.

For the latter maybe you could take the risk on reports which are inofenssive but you must be careful because your users could get a dump and that is not a good situation, especially if the transaction you enhanced is commonly used.

So, my best advice to you is try the standard solutions first and then, if you don't achieve what you want to do then I suggest to have a technical meeting with your coworkers and get a better approach to your requirement. 

On my experience I can tell that there is always a standard solution or at least there is SAP way  to achieve what you need to make and is very uncommon to make enhancements and yet less 'modifications', in fact, I evaluate very much the options that SAP gives me and then I proceed with it. The key here is to find the user-exit or BAdI that will tackle you necessity and how to code them.

One advantage of this is the knowledge you get. Basically you learn and get valuable experience on SAP and on the module you're working, and at the end this will benefit you a lot as an SAP professional. So, take my advice and make sure there's a standard way in SAP.

Well, this was only an introduction. On the next post I'll write more details and show how to implement user-exits and BAdIs and how to find them. So, see you on the next post.

Hope it helps.