Using XPATH statements within SAP NetWeaver 2004s BEx Web Application Designer – Part 1

Introduction

In this blog, I will give you a very simple example on grabbing information from the XML DataProvider available within the SAP NetWeaver 2004s BEx Web Application Designer. If you use a query view as your dataprovider within a web application, and want to get the technical of the query view, this isn’t available in the text elements. Therefore, you may want to write this out. This blog shows how to use a very simple XPATH that will write this out to the new “Text” web item that is available. This is the first in many examples I’ll provide in this blog series. This is the simplest example I could think of. They examples will get more involved within this series as the series goes on…

What is XPATH?

As defined on the w3schools website: “XPath is a language for finding information in an XML document. XPath is used to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML document. XPath is a major element in the W3C’s XSLT standard – and XQuery and XPointer are both built on XPath expressions. So an understanding of XPath is fundamental to a lot of advanced XML usage.” –  http://wiht.link/XPath-intro

Rendering the query view technical name in a text field

In general, this is actually very easy. Follow these simple steps:

Additional Examples?

There are some great examples in the online help. See these additional examples:

• [Dynamic Parameterization of Commands | http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw2004s/helpdata/en/44/7aac356f9f6571e10000000a11466f/frameset.htm]

Summary

Hope you found this useful. XPATH will definitely help you extend the capabilities of the BEx Web Application Designer, so definitely check it out. Also, stay tuned for more involved examples in this blog series. Check out the examples in the online help as well as they are very good! </li>