ABAP_to_the_Future

Summary 9.7
9.6.4 Custom Extensions
There are some people in this world who, when they win a million dollars on the
lottery, get all upset and say, “Oh no, I wish I had won two million dollars.” In the
same way, there are about 20 different expression types in BRFplus you can use
to enter and update rules, but sooner or later you are going to wish there were
more; the one you really wanted just is n’t there. Well, stop moaning, and write
the missing expression type yourself.
You can find out how on SCN by reading “Custom Expressions and Action Types”
(see the “Recommended Reading” box at the end of the chapter) which gives you
incredibly detailed instructions on how to do this. You have to be a top gun ABAP
programmer, though—which I’m sure you are, so no problem there.
As an example, SAP has been working on a graphical expression type that would
look like a Visio diagram. An unexpected problem reared its head at the last minute
(in essence, the propos ed solution wasn’t compatible with Web Dynpro), so
that feature isn’t available yet. Why do n’t you see if you can write one yourself
and beat SAP to it? I’m planning on doing just that—the week after I climb Mount
Everest and score all the goals for the UK national football team that wins the
World Cup final.
9.7 Summary
In some countries with a vol atile climate, you often hear the expression “If you
don’t like the weather, just wait 10 minutes, and then something better may
come along.” BRFplus is like that unpredictable weather: it’s still a relatively
young product and is evolving fast. When you upgrade to a higher SAP
NetWeaver level—for example, a move from SAP NetWeaver 7.02 to 7.31—you
will notice that the delta change between versions will be a lot more obvious than
in mature transactions, like SE24, wh ich stay pretty much the same. Moreover,
even when you are not on the latest SAP NetWeaver release, every time you
install a support stack, you will see a ve ry large number of notes related to BRFplus.
Some of these are bug fixes, but a large number also bring performance
improvements and extra func tionality. Moving from 7.02 SP 9 to 7.02 SP 14
made an enormous difference in terms of extra features and usability improvements.
In the 7.4 release, for example, quite a lot has been added, ranging from
minor (but popular) features (like a list of the last 50 objects you changed) to a test
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