Technical Articles
ZAUTODOC : Automatic generation of technical BW documentation
Creating technical documentation in BW is always a pain. Anoying pages and pages of tables : cubes attributes, transformation mapping… No brain, no gain… but lots of customers ask this kind of docs, because it’s the process ! (And if i must tell the truth… sometimes it’s usefull)
So i created a program to extract all technical objects of a flow and write it in a word document. You can generate simple document like a master data direct alimentation from ECC : just choose your masterdata from selection screen and push F8.
But you can also generate a complete flow document, starting from a workbook and got all cubes, transformations, DSO, and datasources that is involved in the flow. All ABAP routine and formulas are added in the document. It’s not more complex to generate, you just have to select your workbook from selection screen and tick the “recursive” box option before press the F8 key.
Word document is generated using a DOTX template, so you can customize the template with YOUR colors and themes. A cover image is also added on first page. At the begin of the documentation, a dataflow graphic is added to help the global understanding of the flow.
You could choose to display DTP & IP in the document or not, or only if they are in process chain… it’s your choice.
The program use my abstraction class CL_WORD to generate the DOCX file. You need to install it to use ZAUTODOC.
Finally, all of this is free
And there is a direct download link (remember that you will need SAPLINK to install .slnk file) :
Download link : https://www.mediafire.com/folder/if3ljcnesme7y/ABAP
Feel free to comment here
My others blogpost :
LISTCUBE replacement : a new way to display data
ZAL11 : a replacement for AL11
great,
thanks for your useful tools!
Hi Hermann,
This is excellent and something i have been searching for a while. Thanks for the tool. Is there anyway i can execute the program only till a particular info-provider and not the complete flow everytime. The reason is Any object i give, it is picking the entire flow till the data source. Also i did not the table as shown above instead plain text without tables. Am i missing something? Thanks again for the great source. It is very useful
Regards
Haradev
Hello,
Actually, the program is designed to generate documentation with direct ascendant flow :
If you ask documentation for an infocube, you will get :
If you tick the "recursive" checkbox, you will get also all infoprovider that are source of your cube, etc until datasource
Actually, transformation, DTP, IP, (and update rules 3.x) are not independant objects (not proposed in selection screen) but are attached to an infoprodiver.
For your second problem, it sound like a "style" problem. At the begin of the program, there is constant called cs_custo that contain all things that you can (may... must) change to fit to your requirements.
All style names are in this part. You can check which table style are available in the template you used, and which one are defined in cs_custo. I think the gap is here and that's why you got plain text instead of "beautiful" word tables.
Hi Sebestien,
The link mentioned above are not working.
Thank you!!
sorry, my website was offline during few days. It's fixed 🙂
Hello Sébastien,
Thanks for your report, it will save my life !!
Is it possible to generate a XLS file from your report ? For example for the transformations rules.
Thanks
Catherine
Hello,
I'm sorry but its not possible to gernerate xlsx file with the class.
Lot of work to add this possibility, but i know there is another open source project to do this 🙂
Sébastien
Hello Sébastien,
Very usefull tool!
Thanks a lot. I implemented it and it works very well.
Is there a possibility to add information about composite providers and HANA calculation views?
When my query is based on HCPR and Calculation view I don't have details about the source Calculation view (at least the name).
Thanks
Thomas
Hello Thomas,
I did an HANA version of ZAUTODOC, with HCPR, basics info on calc view, and also a picture of the calc view. Unfortunately, i didnt released it.
I currently dont have access to a BW on HANA version to create a clean package.
There is link for partial release with ADSO & HCPR (but not calc view):
https://quelquepart.biz/ZAUTODOC.nugg
Hi Sebastien, Can you please share the latest ZAUTODOC.nugg file that is including ADSO & HCPR.
yes, previous link is reactivated !
https://quelquepart.biz/ZAUTODOC.nugg
Hello Sébastien
Thanks a lot for this partial release. I implemented the new version of the ZAUTODOC program. But I kept the previous version of the class ZCL_WORD. I did not succeed to make the new one working. The word doc is not editable. But with the old version it works and I can see the composite and the link with the source HANA view.
Is your HANA version of ZAUTODOC could be testable?
I could test it on my BW for HANA system if you want.
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
The "hana version" is not yet packaged.
There is a small program which scan the calc view to extract sources
There is another small program which build a JPEG of the calc view.
It remain to assemble theses peaces of code to create the calc view section of the doc.