ABAP_to_the_Future

10
ALV SALV Reporting Framework
10.2.1 Report Flow Step 1: Creating a Container (Generic/Optional)
The vast majority of reports you are called upon to create will take up the whole
screen, but occasionally you will need to have two or more tables of data on the
same screen. Each table of data to be displayed will have its own report object
(e.g., an instance of CL_SALV_TABLE), and when that object is being created you
can pass in a container object that represents an area of a DYNPRO screen inside
which the data table will appear.
Note
Creating such a container is an optional step for the SALV framework; if no such container
object is passed in, then the report will take up the whole screen without you
having to do anything.
If you do need to create a container, though, it can be quite painful: you have to
define a DYNPRO screen, th en paint a big blank custom control in the area the
report will be in, and then do some coding to link this big blank area to an ABAP
object that will represent it. If this was your least favorite part of creating a report
using CL_GUI_ALV_GRID, you’ll like CL_SALV_TABLE (and you’ll never want to go
back to creating containers manually again).
Luckily, it turns out that you don’t have to worry about this at all when defining
your generic interface. For now, don’t bo ther creating a container. If you don’t
pass a container into your INITIALIZE method, then the SA LV will create the
report in full screen mode, which is ge nerally fine. (However, in Section 10.3.1
you’ll see that when you do need to create a container, this step can be automated.)
10.2.2 Report Flow Step 2: Initializing a Report (Generic)
As noted earlier, three of the four steps in the high-level process flow are generic,
which means that they apply to every single report you create. No matter what UI
technology you’re using, there’s some basic information you need in order to
make some high-level report settings, and we need a method to pass in that basic
information. This is the INITIALIZE method.
In Figure 10.4, you can see the parameters of the INITIALIZE method, in which
you pass in some high-level parameters for the report as a whole.
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