SAP/BW Query Elements Demystified – Part 2: Components

As I announced in SAP/BW Query Elements Demystified – Part 1 of this Weblog Series, let us now look at what ARE Query Elements and what ARE NOT. Today I limit to re-usable Query Elements only and give your first hint how to read your BEx transport content. I do not have scientific definition, but from practice Query Elements ARE simply objects created using Query Designer. These are all objects that have following attributes in objects table TADIR:

PGMID (Program ID) = “R3TR” and
OBJECT (Object Type) = “ELEM”:

So far – so good.

Now, what are types of objects we create in Query Designer? Queries, obviously! But not only. If you think you remember that you can create as well Calculated Key Figures (CKF) and Restricted Key Figure (RKF) in the left pane of Query Designer. Going further, you can create Variables from Query Designer. And last, but not least, Structures once created in the right pane, can be saved as reusable, and appear in the left pane of your Query Designer.

Does it make sense? Makes or not – just go to Transport Connections in BW Workbench (RSA1 -> Transport Connection -> SAP Transport -> Object Types, and you will see that all I said is true 🙂

All of them are called Re-usable elements or Components, as they are not query-specific, but rather linked to a cube (Query, CKF, RKF, Structure) or characteristic (Variable).

Based on the information above we know now what NOT query elements are:

BEx Workbooks,
Query Views (you do not create it using Query Designer!),
Webtemplates.

What is practical implication of everything that I wrote so far? It is that details of Components are stored in system table RSZCOMPDIR “Directory of reporting components”. Values in RSZCOMPDIR-COMPUID field are same as in TADIR-OBJ_NAME (“Object Name”). So if I select from RSZCOMPDIR my OBJ_NAME values from the transport, I’ll get some more meaningful data now:

It is just why I got only 3 records, if there were more then 100 object id’s that I copied from transport? Because this table shows you only Components, other words Re-usable elements.

We will discuss Non-Re-usable elements in the next part of this Weblog series.

Regards,
Vitaliy

4 Comments

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Former Member October 4, 2006 at 10:03 pm

I’ve gone through this when I received my first message ‘Object R3TR ELEM 3VXYZ… not available in version A’ and even using the transport connection to transport the whole query again hasn’t helped. I finally found out that one variable was in another package and thus in another transport request that I had to transport before.
So I would be very disappointed if your series ended before you showed us how to get the query component and query from the name. Keep on doing that good stuff.

Dirk

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1. Witalij Rudnicki Post authorOctober 4, 2006 at 10:29 pm
  
  Hello Dirk,
  Thank you for your kind comment. I am not progressing as rapidly as I would like, but you know – these blogs are written when have some free time. And free time is a rare benefit novadays 😉
  After providing theoretical basis, I am going to include examples of practical cases, and I will remember about your one.
  Best regards,
  Vitaliy
  
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  1. Former Member March 17, 2011 at 4:31 am
    
    Hi Vitaliy,
    Searched for your Part 3 of demystifying q-elements but could not find…Would be great if you could publish now here or soon..eagerly waiting !!!!
    
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    1. Witalij Rudnicki Post authorMarch 24, 2011 at 10:09 pm
      
      Thanks for checking it. I looked into my draft blogs, and found that I started part 3 on … October 3rd, 2006, yet never finished. With BW 7.0 I should update previous parts, and just never really got into that. May be one day…
      
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