Deep Structures in container

[Paul.Bakker@osr.treasury.qld.gov.au]

Mark,

Your approach sounds a lot like the workflow 'forms' concept, where a form
full of data is passed to various users for completion (and approval), and
is then committed to the database. But I think 'forms' can only handle flat
structures.

Generally it is not best practice to pass large amounts of data in a
workflow. Imagine how the container database table would blow out in size,
if the data was replicated for each workitem..!
Instead, pass a unique key to the data.

So in this case, you could store all this to-be-approved Material data in a
custom (nested) database table. The table could have a GUID key, which the
workflow can refer to.

Or.. does Material Management have the concept of a 'parked' material, that
can be stored in standard tables, pending approval?

cheers
Paul Bakker



From:	Mark Daley <mark_daley at hotmail.com>
To:	<sap-wug at mit.edu>
Date:	18/04/2011 10:59 PM
Subject:	Deep Structures in container
Sent by:	sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu




Hello folks,

I am building a Material Master Data Request workflow (ECC 5.0) and I would
like your input on storing large amounts of data in deep structures in the
workflow container.

The business requirement is to gather the material data from several agents
concurrently/parallel(via custom screens) and once all tasks are completed
the Material request is sent for approval. If all is well the data  is
posted to SAP (via BAPI). Each agent enters unique data pertaining to their
role in the business eg R&D, Finance etc.

In the workflow, I am storing this data in a single container element(deep
structure) containing 18 sub structures eg MARA, MARC etc and 9 tables eg
MAKT , MARM etc.

The intention of using a single deep structure is to reduce maintenance on
the number of wf bindings. The interface to the FM that calls the various
custom screens uses this same deep structure.

Could passing a large deep structure data element between task and wf cause
issues eg performance/storage/archiving?  There will be approx 2000
workflows a month.

Given the data gathered from the agents must be approved before being
posted in SAP, is there any other way I could be doing this other than
using a deep structure to store the data in the workflow?
I don’t want to explicitly add a data element for each piece of material
data in my wf container plus all the bindings!

I’d appreciate your input/experience especially if you have any experience
of workflow handling large amounts of data in the container or with deep
structures.

Thanks
Mark_______________________________________________
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