Understanding DSM and BRFPlus – the Unified Rendering trap for young players
Possibly my shortest blog ever…
So you are using DSM or BRFPlus for the first time and you are faithfully following the tutorials and wandering through the various screens… and then strange things start to happen?!
Menus disappear as soon as they appear, checkboxes refuse to check on or off, move up/down icons refuse to be grabbed, radio buttons refuse to click, there are strange and peculiar short dumps happen as you move from one rule object to the next, text boxes are mysteriously resized, all sorts of crazy stuff is happening. WTF?!
What you are experiencing is the joy of Unified Rendering. Because the DSM workbench and BRFPlus workbench are based on the ABAP WebDynpro protocol, they are susceptible to underlying issues with the ABAP WebDynpro protocol itself.
Now for the good news… !
Nearly always these are problems that have already been solved. But if you don’t do a lot of ABAP WebDynpro development you may not have heard the term Unified Rendering, and thankfully I am not going to attempt to explain it now either (if you are interested try asking someone in the ABAP forum).
All you need to know is that it’s the Unified Rendering notes for your release and support pack that you need to fix these bizarre behaviours.
You can find the Unified Rendering notes in SAP’s support site http://support.sap.com/notes just search for the term Unified Rendering with your release and support pack.
How do you know which release and support pack? Logon to your system using SAP Logon and go to the menu option System > Status then use the magnifying glass icon under Component Version to find the component SAP_UI. It should look something like this- the first number is the release and the second is the support pack.
These Unified Rendering notes come as a set of anywhere between 2 and 20 notes per release/support pack. In SAP’s support site the matching notes will look something like this.
What you want to do is to apply ALL of the Unified Rendering notes that match your release and support pack. Just apply them all in the order specified (I before Ia before Ib, II before III, etc.) – don’t do them piecemeal and don’t skip any, otherwise who knows which of those weird and wonderful behaviours will remain?
And don’t forget… let the Basis/Admin folk know… anytime they patch the SAP_UI component to a new release/support pack level, just grab the Unified Rendering notes for the new release/support pack level and apply them.
This is one time when prevention is definitely infinitely preferable to the cure. Fixing broken rule objects is not something any of us have a lot of time for.
So get your Unified Rendering notes now… and save yourself from the trap of Unified Rendering issues.
Very, very important info! Thanks for that!
There is one central note 2154957 - Unified Rendering for SAP_UI 740 that lists the relevant notes and the sequence in which they shall be applied.
Surprisingly according to this note there are several notes that shall not be applied although existing: there is a note "Corrections for unified rendering up to SAP_UI 740/13 I" that shall not be applied. Instead the note "Corrections for unified rendering up to SAP_UI 740/13 Ia" is the one that shall be implemented before IIa. Not intuitive but hopefully the central note is correct.
Seriously WTF!
I created a few Elements; activated them; but for some reason could not for the life of me see them in my Decision Table (Insert Column).
I did this a few times. Then gave up. Closed my session. And restarted BRF+. Went back to my Expression. And this time they were all there! The restart of the session did the trick.
Very strange!
Jocelyn, any ideas on what would be the right note for NW 731 SP 0009?
Thanks
Arijit
Hi Arjit, The blog explains how to find the relevant Unified Rendering notes. If you have those then it may be a BRF+ problem so search under those notes. But from what you describe that sounds like unified rendering issues.
Rgds,
Jocelyn