ABAP_to_the_Future

Options for Enhancements 9.6
The end result is that you can have a workflow with decision rules that are
defined within BRFplus. In the running example, whenever you get a request to
build a monster with a certain level of sanity, you can use BRFplus to work out
the color, and then perform some actions in SAP Business Workflow based upon
that result.
9.6 Options for Enhancements
No matter how good someone makes something, we human beings are never satisfied.
The positive aspect of this is th at it makes your job as a developer safe,
because end users will always be crying out for more from your programs.
BRFplus was designed with this part of human nature in mind and thus has builtin
facilities for when what you get out of the box is not quite good enough for
what you want, and therefore you need to extend the functionality. It would be
beyond the scope of this book to go in to great detail about the various possible
enhancements available in BRFplus, but it’s worth a brief discussion of the possibilities
for enhancement that do exist.
9.6.1 Procedure Expressions
Instead of a decision table or decision tree, one of the 20 or so other options for
a BRFplus expression (type of rule) is a procedure call. Don’t be fooled by the
name; you are not calling a FORM routine, but instead a function module or a public
method of a class.
The BRFplus framework lets you do somemapping between the function/method
parameters and the data objects in BRFplus. The positive side of this is that
because you are calling an ABAP routine you can do anything in the world. The
negative side is this: If you have to reso rt to calling an ABAP routine, then why
are you using BRFplus in the first place? In fact, there could be many valid reasons;
for example, BRFplus might solve 95% of your problem in a more compact
way than using Z tables and ABAP code, but you need to call an ABAP routine to
round out the last 5% of the problem—in the same way that you would use a user
exit to make a standard SAP transaction go the extra mile.
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