Visibility

In Customizing, you can define whether certain elements are to be displayed for the object type or not. From the generation, it is possible to manipulate this attribute at runtime.

Two auxiliary methods are provided for this purpose:

  • SET_VISIBLE

  • SET_NOT_VISIBLE

Visibility affects an entire row and does not affect elements representing a column. 

Editability

The generation rules can manipulate the editable nature of an element (to do this, the element must be editable in Customizing: the editable nature of a non-editable element cannot be manipulated by the program).

  • SET_EDITABLE

  • SET_NOT_EDITABLE

This indicator controls the editability of all value fields of the element, regardless of whether the element represents a row or a column.

The sub-table FIELD_PROPERTIES applies for control at the column level. You can use this table, for example, to determine whether only the minimum value or the maximum value is editable.

Mandatory field

This Customizing parameter can also be manipulated with a generation method

  • SET_MANDATORY

  • SET_NOT_MANDATORY

If an element is to be flagged as mandatory, an error message is automatically generated as long as the element is not assigned a value. (at least one value field must be maintained).

Processing status of the data record

MODEREF is a control attribute of the element that is normally set automatically by the system.

4 values are set by the system:

I: If an element was maintained manually
C: For referrers: If the data set is to be different from its primary reference, moderef C is set.
D: For referrers: If the record is to be marked as deleted, moderef D is set.
G: If the value comes from a generation method, Moderef G is set.

The generation may overwrite Moderef in certain cases:

For referenced records, Moderef can be set to G or D (to activate or deactivate an element).

Moderef X can also be used in the generation to be able to delete a complete row if it is no longer needed.

If the element value is set to <space>, the unvalued line will be kept.

See: Indicators and properties for element values (P)

Force_gen

Normally, generation does not overwrite data that was previously entered manually.

Manually entered data has priority over generated data unless the user has explicitly clicked on "Generate with overwrite": All manually entered values on the tab will be replaced by the generated values (as soon as a generation method has been created for it ).

In special cases, it can be desirable to overwrite the manually entered data without having to do a dedicated manual step "Generate with overwrite". For this, the attribute FORCE_GEN = abap_true must be set.

Origin

Origin is an eighty-character string that can be used to store the origin of the value.

For evaluation purposes, the field is automatically populated in the QPPD standard: GEN, BUS, MANU, BRFplus, TOE...

The generation methods can manipulate this content if required.