Webflow

[Dave Shoemaker]

Jocelyn and all,
Thanks. This is good info. I continue to be a litte
concerned about change management around the
generated code. If I modify the generated module pool
and screens, can you think of any problems I might
have with change management? I am thinking of two
areas. First, will my modifications to the generated
code have any transport problems? If the code is in
our namespace, I should be OK. Secondly, once I have
modified SAP generated code, I can re-generate no
longer. What if SAP improves the generation source
template? I do not receive the improvements. Also,
will SAP accept an OSS message concerning
functionality in their generated code if I have
modified it?
 
In other words, is this modification a "recommended"
practice?
 
Thanks again,
  - Dave
--------------------------------------------------
Hi All,
We seem to be getting some confusion happening
between the two parts of
webflow, i.e.
a) Dialog webflow - e.g. where a user executes a
workitem via the
web
b) Automatic webflow - i.e. where XML documents are
communicated
between workflows
 
These are two separate areas (although both part
of "webflow") and
work quite differently.
 
Dialog webflow works using the Internet Transaction
Server i.e. SAP's ITS
and uses FORM.HTMLPROCESS tasks with generated web
transactions.  It is
available from R/3 3.1.
 
Automatic webflow uses web activity tasks and is
available from R/3 4.6C.
 
I gather Dave is talking about Dialog webflow, but
Nicholas is talking
about automatic webflow.
 
Please don't confuse the two, folks in your
questions.  They really
do use quite different techniques.
 
Re Dave's question.
You only have to stick to "Simple" container elements
if you want to use
the generated web transaction (generated from your
FORM.HTMLPROCESS task)
as is.  You should definitely stick to simple
container elements for the
result of your task to keep the binding to the
workflow simple.
However if you want to use more complex structures to
build the
web display, you can bind complex structures, e.g.
object references
to your HTMLPROCESS task, but you will need to change
the generated
web transaction to read these references out of the
container and use
them.
 
This is ok - the generated web transaction is in the
customer namespace
so you are allowed to change it.  You can use the
workflow API
(function modules in function group SWWA) to get
extra information
about the current workflow/task/container/etc.
You can add to the generated code and screens just be
careful not to
lose the generated code so that all the bindings
still work.
 
 
As an example there are a number of web transactions
in EBP/BBP and
ESS that use this technique - i.e. just use the
generated web
transaction as a starting point.
 
You do need an ABAP-er with dialog programming skills
and some HTML
knowledge to adjust the matching ITS service
files/templates.
 
Regards,
Jocelyn Dart.