International Editable SALV Day 2023 – Year 15

[hardyp180]

Dont Go Changing Data

Dear CL_SALV_TABLE Fans,

Welcome to February 8^th, 2023, which is the fifteenth 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/2022/02/08/international-editable-salv-day-2022-year-14/

This day marks the 15th 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. I used to add a link to that discussion but the link no longer works because SAP desires that no-one sees that original request and discussion anymore.

There is no real point rehashing the same old arguments over and over again so here is a brief summary.

• CL_SALV_TABLE was supposed to be the successor to CL_GUI_ALV_GRID


• However, the “new improved” version lacked certain vital features the “old” one had the most important of which was the ability to make the ALV grid editable


• Rightly or wrongly, end users love editable ALV grids and thus developers want to give the end users what they want


• As a result, about ten seconds after CL_SALV_TABLE came out pretty much every single customer of SAP started pestering SAP to give CL_SALV_TABLE this vital missing functionality


• This has fallen on deaf ears


• Over the decades many work-around methods have been proposed. Each time SAP locks on to such workarounds and makes a change in standard SAP to disable the workaround


• If SAP developers spent even a fraction of the time on making CL_SALV_TABLE editable that they do on closing down the workarounds the problem would have been solved years ago


• The SAP GUI is going to be with us for decades to come. If SAP did not believe this, they would not keep pumping huge effort into improving the SAP GUI e.g., the SAP GUI 8.0 just came out and it has tons of new features including an improvement to editable ALV grids which in theory are not allowed even in CL_GUI_ALV_GRID.

What has happened since last year? We have a new workaround! An “easter egg” as it were in standard SAP code, presumably put there by an SAP developer who wanted to make an ALV grid for themselves, but don’t let the customers find out. Someone found out anyway.

Editable CL_SALV_TABLE after release 756 | SAP Blogs

I reached out to the lady who wrote that blog to make sure she was OK with me putting the link in this blog and she was fine with that. You will see this and her response in the comments section of the above blog.

I have no doubt this works, but I also have no doubt that in release 757 or later someone at SAP will latch on to this “easter egg” and shut it down so the CL_SALV_TABLE is not editable again.

Once again – why spend so much time and effort and money actively fighting your customers rather than trying to help them? Someone please tell me the logic behind this because I cannot see it.

To put all this into context – what has happening 15 years ago in 2008 when requests to make CL_SALV_TABLE editable started coming in?

• George W. Bush is President of the USA. Barack Obama wins the presidential election in November


• Gordon Brown is Prime Ministers of the UK


• Kevin Rudd is Prime Minister of Australia


• Lula is President of Brazil (same as now)


• Global Financial Crisis is triggered by “Sub-Prime” Mortgages


• Russia wins the Eurovision song contest, and everyone is happy for them.


• The Large Hadron Collider starts up


• Iraq war cost approaches $3 Trillion

The Large Hadron collider still has not managed to discover faster than light travel, time travel etc. but it remains hopeful. In the same way I am hopeful that one day SAP will change its mind about making CL_SALV_TABLE editable.

KC and the Sunshine Band advised me to “Give It Up” but I won’t. I will keep on posting this annual blog until I die of old age.

Give It Up

See you next year!

Cheersy Cheers

Paul