ABAP_to_the_Future

BRFplus 9
The promise of the BRFplus framework is to (a) deliver a platform in which rules
can be set up and changed in an easier and more flexible manner than anything
before in SAP’s long history, (b) enable rules to be more easily visible than was
previously the case, and (c) enable rules tobe owned by the business in a very real
sense. As part of that lofty goal, SAP delivers BRFplus at no extra charge, bundled
with your SAP NetWeaver license. This is worth stressing: BRFplus is not a separately
licensed product. If you are on ECC 6.0, then you have this already and can
use it at no additional cost. Trust me on this! When you start playing with the
BRFplus transaction, it might not look like the rest of the ABAP Workbench transactions—such
as SE80 and its derivatives (e.g., SE24 and SE37)—but that is only
because the user interface is in Web Dy npro. BRFplus is not an external system,
and it does not run on an external system. BRFplus is wholly ABAP, just like any
program you write.
SAP Decision Service Management
There is also a “premium” version (i.e., a version you have to pay for) of BRFplus called
SAP Decision Service Management. This book only covers technologies that come bundled
in with the normal SAP license, so this chapter does not discuss SAP Decision Service
Management.
Although BRFplus is a useful tool, it also involves extr acting a lot of conditional
logic and letting business users contro l business rules—so a lot of programmers
tend to avoid it. This chapter discusses the best use cases for BRFplus and how to
get around some of its perceived shortcomings.
You will start by looking at how rules are traditionally stored within SAP systems
(Section 9.1). Then you’ll see two actual business examples (with the names
changed to protect the innocent) that show in a very clear way how BRFplus can
accomplish something easily that cust omizing tables and ABAP would have to
struggle very hard to match (Section 9.2 and Section 9.3). Next, take a quick look
at some very useful features of BRFplu s: a way to simulate how any given business
rule reaches a particular decision (Section 9.4) and integration with SAP
business workflow (Section 9.5). Finally, the chapter will conclude by looking at
the ways BRFplus can be enha nced if it does not do everything you want out of
the box (Section 9.6). The good news is that the framework was designed with
this in mind.
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