Personal Insights
International Editable SALV Day 2020
YEAR TWELVE
Dear CL_SALV_TABLE Fans,
Welcome to February 8th, 2020 which is the twelfth International Editable SALV Day. See below for a link to a blog I wrote to celebrate this day exactly one year ago:-
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/02/08/international-editable-salv-day-2019/
This day marks the 12th anniversary of James Hawthorne going cap in hand to SAP and suggesting maybe the CL_SALV_TABLE could be brought up to functional parity with the CL_GUI_ALV_GRID and have an option to be editable.
https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/733872
To sum things up – opinion is divided here – every single customer of SAP wants the SALV_TABLE to be editable, but SAP says no all of you do not actually want that, you do not know what you want, you foolish fools you.
So – what is new this year? Obviously nothing new from SAP- the CL_SALV_TABLE is still as rigid as it always was, and always will be.
One argument SAP could put up was that everyone has to move to S/4HANA and in the cloud version there is no SAP GUI and the ALV is a GUI based report so therefore there is no point in fixing the obvious error we made with CL_SALV_TABLE. However this very month the deadline for S/4HANA migration was moved from 2025 to 2030. So another ten years of the SAP GUI – at least – and moreover the vast bulk of customers who have moved to S/4HANA thus far at least) have chosen the on-premise option and I bet most of them still use the SAP GUI, rightly or wrongly.
The other interesting thing that happened this week which has an analogy to what happened with CL_SALV_TABLE was this amazing blog. The blog itself is not so amazing compared to the response it invoked.
https://blogs.sap.com/2020/02/04/sap-build-product-sunset/
What that blog was all about was shutting down a product before an equivalent replacement for that product was available, hence the highly emotional response from the community.
What has that to do with CL_SALV_TABLE you might say? The story is somewhat similar in that we are told to stop using CL_GUI_ALV_GRID as that is old hat, and here is a replacement that cannot do half of what the old product can do, but it is new so you are mandated to use it.
There is no point going around and around in circles. Here is the situation summed up:-
- The ALV is going to be in use for the next 10-20 years, possibly longer.
- SAP want everyone to use CL_SALV_TABLE
- Developers who do live to regret it – because it is not editable and the business ALWAYS want it to be editable
- It became apparent 12 years ago that every single SAP customer wants SAP to change its mind on this, but it never will because … because it will not.
Now it is the nature of human beings to want things to improve, so hopefully when the 8th of February 2021 rolls around and I post this blog again my level of bitterness about the whole thing will have increased. The bitterer I get the more free pints of “Best Bitter” I am awarded (that’s a sort of drink – beer – in the UK by the way).
We do after all want every year to be better than the last in some sense.
Just in case it is not clear what this is all about – we all like the CL_SALV_TABLE it is great. Just make it at least as good as its predecessor. Make it editable.
Cheersy Cheers
Paul
Most of the S/4HANA implementation we see are all on-premise except a very few where a few processes are on the cloud version.
From a UI perspective- I think the smart template should be integrated with ABAP language core syntax and that is taking too much time and there is no proper documentation to get that ship moving.
Fiori is not the perfect solution, web Dynpro and even Dynpro are still more powerful for proper business users unless SAP expects only novices to use it's ERP. Another point is that many customers prefer to build their own UI components on open frameworks rather than UI5.
You are not joking about web developers wanting to use their favorite language rather than the UI5 library.
Happily I just expose the ABAP services with Gateway and they can use whatever they want. That was always the promise and beauty of Gateway.
And yes, the truth that dare not speak its name – end users prefer DYNPRO table control screens to editable ALV grids and WDA and UI5.
We – as a community – need to think about this – what is so good about the table control experience? Under the covers the technology is horrible – business logic mixed with UI logic – but if people (our customers) like the look and feel of the surface have we been heading in the wrong direction?
"The story is somewhat similar in that we are told to stop using CL_GUI_ALV_GRID as that is old hat, and here is a replacement that cannot do half of what the old product can do, but it is new so you are mandated to use it."
Isn't that called officially simplification nowadays?
Well, seems like now, in S/4 HANA era you have to do it via the Fiori Elements + CDS/BOPF/SADL, oh, stop. BOPF is officially outdated since 1909, now recommended approach is: Fiori Elements + CDS/EML/BDL/BIL/SADL.
Is there any relevant info on how to achieve the same level of functionality as ALV using this zoo of DSLs? =)
Any guidelines? =)
Hold up.. "BOPF is officially outdated since 1909"? Damn, I didn't know that. Well, more acronyms to get used to. ^^
There is a note saying edit functionality is not released for customers and in case of trouble SAP could offer only consulting services
Yep, note 695910 - ALV Grid: Editable grid and methods that are not released
In my experience if something (anything) is broken and you complain about it, backs comes the response from SAP "this is consulting".
in this case it misses the point. the point is that with CL_GUI_ALV_GRID you could edit the data, with CL_SALV_TABLE you cannot, we are told to use CL_SALV_TABLE but do not, because it is not editable.
It is like if I have a leak in my Nuclear Reactor. I could publish 100 notes saying "there is a leak in my Nuclear reactor, do not go near it!" and add that same fact to the online documentation, or I could stop the leak.
Which of the two do you think is going on here?
Thanks Paul for keeping this memorial day up!
I am not sure { where | when } and by whom I { read | heard } that this is not the recommend path anymore. As far as I remember and understood, the SALV thing was kind of experiment to make the grid more object oriented. At least there are some limitations using the SALV comparing to the ALV-grid. One is the missing editing functionality, others I do not remember right now.
I totally agree! If I could make use of my limited second sight power, I'd suggest that the SAPGUI will find it's way even in the cloud environment...
What I find very weird is that SAP constantly improves the functionality of the editing features of cl_gui_alv_grid (e.g. input history for editable fields) but do not manage to officially support the editing feature.
I am not totally sure ALV will continue a long time (in specific development), with the CDS view analyzed/extracted through Excel.
It is more or less what we had seen when we switch from WRITE report to ALV Report. Why did I have to manage a layout for all my reports? There is a tool that do it better than me. Now we have a tool to extract the data and you could use it directly in Excel, do chart, ...
Why do you want to loose time to create something between your data and the end-user ?
but, I am agree, this Edit mode is terribly missing.
@SAP: Yes we can!
Last night it occurred to me that now that the deadline to move to S/4HANA has been extended from 2025 to 2030, that means I have another ten years of posting a blog such as this every 8th of February.
Possibly longer as some organizations will miss the deadline.
I wonder if I can get up to year 25 with still no response?
Yes, you can. And yes, you will.
Btw, it is possible for checkbox hotspot, using ref CL_SALV_COLUMN_LIST.
But yes, still looking forward for other type of column.
Is it possible for HIDE Grand total value using cl_salv_table method.? (Like - gs_layout-notataline = 'X' in REUSE_ALV)
I think couple of unique options are not possible in this method, comparing REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY.
Vijay.