SAP GUI Issues - Inconsistency check tool

In my experience with SAP, I came across lot of issues for which everything looks fine on the development side but the report does not work properly for few users.

If you come across any strange issues or issues which appear only for few SAP users, then its mostly related to SAP GUI which is used to log on to SAP.

I have listed few issues below which users might face if the GUI installation was not proper,

1. When you open any transaction on SAP and it dumps with program name being SAPFGUICNTL, SAPLOLEA or any SAP*GUI* or SAP*OLE* related report, then that dump is related to GUI issues.
2. Issues/Dumps with ALV reports - If ALV's dump or look weird for particular users, then that is an issue with GUI. ALV's interact with our front end to execute few API's, if the GUI is not installed properly then the ALV's may not work.
3. Issues HTML output reports.
4. Issues on Graphical output reports.
5. Issues with ECL Viewer which is delivered by SAP for viewing engineering drawings.

In general, if you come to a scenario where it works fine in few machines fails in few, then that might be mostly related to GUI version.

Basically, when you install SAP GUI, it installs lots of components related to features which you might be used on your SAP system. Best Ex, is ALV, when you click on DOWNLOAD to desktop button on an ALV output, SAP has to interact with your desktop to save the file onto the desktop.

Now, to check if that is really a GUI related issue or not, SAP has provided with few tools/techniques which can be used to detect the issue. SAP Note 1099439 illustrates all the techniques provided by SAP. In this blog, I have listed one of the simplest method which is,

Once you log on to SAP, you will see a button on the top right side for customizing our layout, click on that and then on Options,

On the next pop-up, on the left tree, click on the last node which is System Information.

Here, you should see the button which says CHECK SAP GUI INSTALLATION, once you click on that SAP will check your GUI installation to check if any of the components are installed incorrectly or if any components are missing.

Creating View Cluster

What is View Cluster?

We all know about Table Maintenance which is providing an option for user to maintain entries in a Z table using transaction SM30.

Suppose if I want to maintain entries in more than one Z tables which are dependent, if we need to maintain each table once using SM30, that is a tedious job and there is quite a good chance of user making mistakes in maintaining these tables. To handle this scenario one of the option which comes to any person working on SAP is, can we write a program which helps me to maintain all the tables at once? Yes, we can, but, there is another option provided by SAP, which is View Cluster.

Even this is something done by a developer there are some pros compared to maintenance transaction, if you are looking for simple functionality of just maintaining entries in table and triggering some process during SAVE/DELETE etc. If you are looking for complex, user friendly or cosmetic kind of features, then YES developing a report is a better option. Main advantage of View Cluster is, its easy to use, easily understandable by person with no technical background, doesn't needed to be changed if we have any changes to tables,

Creating View Cluster:

SE54 is the transaction code for creating View Cluster. This is the same transaction we use for creating Table Maintenance too.

Once you enter into this transaction, on Top you will see a button which says Edit View Cluster, click on that button to navigate to View Cluster create screen.

You will see the below screen, where specify the desired View Cluster Name and click on Create/Change button.

Below screen is the header screen where you can specify the Short Text of the View Cluster and also its attributes.

Here we are creating a simple cluster so, I have selected use in Hierarchy radio button and Complete Radio button.

Once the header maintenance screen is maintained, then click on the Object Structure folder on the left to maintain the actual list of tables you want to be able to maintain using this View Cluster.

View/Table Column - Here we specify the Table/View name which you want to include
DDIC Column - When you click on that it will show the fields of that table
Short Text Column - Specify a description for this Table
Predecessor - This field is used to maintain Header/Child relationship b/w tables.
Dependency - Here we indicate whether it is a Header Table to child table.
Position - Position of the table in the output
Start - At least 1 Table needs to be defined as a Starting point.

Similarly you can add upto 14 tables in a single View Cluster.

Adding Parent/Child Relationship tables:

If we have Header table and Item table to be maintained, then 1 row will be related to Header table and when maintaining Item Table, on its entry maintain Predecessor as Header table, later maintain the field dependencies for both the tables. Below Screen shots explain as how to maintain them,

On the Field-dependence screen,

Once this is complete, Save the Cluster, and then click on Activate on the Header Entry level, that will save and create the view cluster.

Testing:

SM34 is the transaction to maintain entries in View Cluster. For the above demo, final output looks as shown below.

I had 3 tables, 1 is Independent table and 2 dependent tables. Final output shows as below, the description we gave while creating the entries will be shown in the final output too.

Important Transactions:

SE54 - Create/Change View Cluster

SM34 - Maintain data in View Cluster
SE93 - Used to attach Transaction Code to View Cluster.