Say Good-Bye to 60 Character Fun and Super Short Texts

January 22, 2014 | 822 Views |

Marc Bernard

SAP NetWeaver characteristics infoobject masterdata sap bw SAP Netweaver 7.4 sap netweaver business warehouse 74

Hello BW Friends,

with a sad eye we are saying “good-bye”, “adiós”, and “auf wiedersehen” to the 60 character limitation for characteristic values and long textual descriptions that were shorter than a tweet! 🙁 It was so much fun to find the workarounds and code one enhancement after the other. NOT!!!! 😉

Just check my old blog for the work the community put into this.

What’s new?

We are starting 2014 with a bang and have released SAP NetWeaver BW 7.4 to the market. You might have seen it in the roadmap update already but if not, here’s the BIG NEWS: You can create characteristics with a length of up to 250 characters and the textual description for characteristic values can now be up to 1,333 characters long. Woohoo, that’s more than enough to store my resume. 😀

What do you need to know?

First here’s the proof in the online documentation for Creating InfoObjects:

Tab Page: General – Modeling – SAP Library

Tab Page: Master Data/Texts – Modeling – SAP Library

Secondly, the change comes at a little price: You will have to check you custom code if it’s compatible with the changes and you might have to make some adjustments. Please see the following SAP Notes to prepare your system for the upgrade.

1823174 – BW7.40 Changes and customer-specific programs

1879618 – Pre-upgrade measures for upgrade/update to 7.4

What’s next?

We are working on tools to support you in the transition. Please stay tune and I will post updates here when they become available.

Also please post you experiences with the enhanced modeling options here in the comments.

Have Fun!

PS: Too many smilies? 😛

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30 Comments

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Phani KV January 22, 2014 at 3:26 am

our things simplifying using data length It’s good.

Thanks,

Phani.

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Manna Das January 22, 2014 at 4:12 am

Thanks for sharing, it seems sap has give the option to store huge values .

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Suman Chakravarthy K January 22, 2014 at 4:52 am

This is an amazing feature given by SAP 🙂 . This would reduce stress on database level by avoiding codes and makes life very easy. Kudos to SAP team. 🙂 🙂

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Anshu Lilhori January 23, 2014 at 5:27 pm

Much awaited feature has been finally released..Really elated to know that..Hats off to SAP team for getting this done.. 🙂

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Jürgen Noe January 23, 2014 at 6:12 pm

GREAT!!!!!!

Thanks a lot for this News!

like (0)
Pavan Kumar K R January 24, 2014 at 5:06 am

Really excited to say good-bye to 60 character. 🙂

We are working on tools to support you in the transition.

May I know whether this feature will be made available in BI 7.0 and BW 7.3 as well.

–KRPK

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1. Prashanth konduru January 24, 2014 at 7:33 am
  
  Hi Pavan,
  
  No,This features is part of BW 7.4 version …
  
  Regards
  
  KP
  
  like (0)
CH Raman January 24, 2014 at 5:20 am

its great future and more needed one. Thanks Marc for sharing with us.

2014 started with a bang.

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Prashanth konduru January 24, 2014 at 7:33 am

Thanks for sharing the info ..

Regards

KP

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Alberto Garcia January 24, 2014 at 12:21 pm

These are good news, one BW limitation less. Still too many limitations to improve tough!

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Martin Grob January 24, 2014 at 1:13 pm

any chance it will be included in further support stacks on 7.3x releases?

like (0)
1. Marc Bernard Post authorJanuary 24, 2014 at 2:52 pm
  
  Zero chance. This is only available with BW 7.4 (or higher).
  
  Regards,
  Marc
  
  SAP Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
  
  like (0)
Krishna Chaitanya January 29, 2014 at 6:53 am

Now we can make use of this feature for all the comments related part. Thanks to SAP team. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Regards,

Krishna Chaitanya.

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kushal thakral January 30, 2014 at 6:57 am

hi marc

great to know that character length limitation of 60 is now removed in sap 7.4 version and will really help in data modeling

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Ali S Qahtani January 30, 2014 at 11:14 am

Thanks Mark for sharing the great news for something that’s been long awaited for. Is this feature enabled because of BW on HANA or HANA is not relevant?

like (0)
1. Marc Bernard Post authorJanuary 30, 2014 at 3:21 pm
  
  Ali,
  
  the feature is not tied to SAP HANA and available for all platforms supported by BW 7.4.
  
  Regards,
  Marc
  
  SAP Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
  
  like (0)
  1. Jürgen Noe January 30, 2014 at 4:15 pm
    
    Hi Marc,
    
    i don’T get the two ties together. First you say long texts available only in BW 7.4x.
    
    BW 7.4x is for me BW 7.3x but optimized for HANA. Now you say this feature is not bound to HANA, but available for all plattforms (which I mean is really great). So can we expect a OSS Note / correction for BW 7.3x somewhen so that really long texts will work in BW 7.3x also?
    
    Regards,
    
    Jürgen
    
    like (0)
    1. Marc Bernard Post authorJanuary 30, 2014 at 4:42 pm
      
      Hello Juergen,
      
      sorry for the confusion (I edited my response). This is only available for BW 7.4 but for all databases and operating systems.
      
      Regards,
      Marc
      
      SAP Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
      
      like (0)
Suseelan Hari February 23, 2014 at 4:52 pm

Thanks for updating Great News and New updates.

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jerry jerome March 24, 2014 at 9:29 pm

Hi Marc,

Thanks a lot for sharing the information. It is indeed a great news.

We are planning to take the info from STXH and STXL into BW. Now that should be fine with the new approach!!!

Thanks and Regards,

Jerry Jerome

SAP BW Consultant

like (0)
Saikat Pal March 25, 2014 at 10:28 am

Great things to know.Great work by SAP Teams. 🙂 .

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Vimal Alexander Kannan June 26, 2014 at 10:56 pm

Hi Marc,

Currently we are using BW730 Can u please give some idea about the OOS Note :

1823174 – BW 7.4 changes and customer-specific programs. I know this note applicable for BW740.

Just I want to know why we need to implement the OSS note and When we need to implement ?

Thanks,

Vimal Alexander

like (0)
1. Marc Bernard Post authorJune 27, 2014 at 1:13 pm
  
  Hello Vimal,
  
  If you do not adjust your custom tables and coding, there’s a chance that things might not work correctly after the upgrade (activation or syntax errors, dumps, etc). There’s also a chance that the upgrade itself will fail for example if you used domain RSCHAVL in the key of a database table.
  
  The assessment of what actually needs to be adjusted should be done well in advance of the upgrade. Then you can put the adjustment work into the project plan.
  
  In terms of timing, the changes are best done in the original system before you even start the project.
  
  Regards,
  Marc
  
  SAP Strategic Customer Engagements (SCE)
  
  like (0)
  1. Vimal Alexander Kannan June 27, 2014 at 5:59 pm
    
    Hi Marc,
    
    Thanks a lot for such a wonderful explanation.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Vimal Alexander
    
    like (0)
p bansi June 27, 2014 at 6:12 pm

Hi,

Its good to know that we can store char length to 250 & short Description upto 1,333 characters long.

But just want to confirm that will it affects to our performance of a report?

Regards,

Bansi

like (0)
Mikhail Budilov September 27, 2014 at 1:08 pm

> Max length of up to 250 characters and the textual description for characteristic values can now be up to 1,333 characters long.

It’s good news. SAP positioning SAP BW as EDW. In real life we have a cases when 250 chars is not enough. By example comments. Is there any plans at SAP to move forward and increase by example to 500 or more? Or any other options (maybe new characteristic type – Texts).

like (0)
1. Mikhail Budilov September 27, 2014 at 1:22 pm
  
  Wow, in BW 7.4.SP8
  
  New with SAP BW 7.4 SP8: XXL – Attributes
  
  Possibility to load and store different Files types (MIME Types)
  
  as XXL-attribute into BW
  
  • E.g. PDF’s, XML, Office Files, Images, Video-Files, Audio-Files
  
  Store very long strings as attribute in SAP BW
  
  • E.g. Twitter information (Tweets), File-paths, URL
  
  like (0)
Harish Kumar September 27, 2014 at 2:59 pm

Already started using 250 char master data.

Simplifies many tasks in BW.

Br, Harish

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N Muralidhar Reddy April 3, 2017 at 4:15 am

Hi All,

I have requirement to show a material description of more than 200 characters so I am using Extra Long text property for that material object in BW 7.5 on HANA and I have a BEx query. Here, I am consuming that BEx query in SAP Universe Design Tool(UTD) and using that Universe I have a WEBi report.

The reason that I am using Universe is, the WEBi report is very old one which was built on Universe. so, i have to follow that.

Here, issue is, even though i have set all the properties correctly in BW and BEx, my WEBi report is still showing 60 character length description in my WEBi report. I have become clue less after checking all the ways.

Can you please help me if i am missing something else that should be looked into really.

Thanks

Murali

like (0)
1. Marc Bernard Post authorApril 3, 2017 at 8:37 pm
  
  Hello Murali,
  
  I don’t know if this is a functional gap, bug, or something not configured properly. Please create an incident report for BOBJ UTD so SAP support can take a look.
  
  Best,
  Marc
  Product Management SAP HANA DW
  
  like (0)