Most reports allow entering selections before report execution. Selections limit the result set of the report so as to extract only records that match the selection.

A selection variant can be created in SAP at the input screen of an ABAP report. The purpose of a variant is to save selection settings on your input screen. This minimizes the need to enter selections each time you run a report.

Note: Manual selections and variants can be combined. Manual selections overwrite any selections in the variant.

Report-Variants-Section

Choose a Variant #

Choose a variant from the drop-down-list Variant (1). If you create a new variant in SAP after the report extraction was created, click the [Refresh] button next to the drop-down list to access the new variant.

Note: The selections of the variant are not displayed in the Selection Screen section of the window. To see the definition of a variant, take a look at the report’s variant in SAP.

Edit Selections #

This section corresponds to the report’s input screen in SAP. Some selection fields only have a technical name and no description. To understand which field corresponds to a field in SAP, take a look at the report’s input screen in SAP. Click on a selection field and press function key F1. This displays the technical name of a selection field.

  1. Click the [Edit] button next to the selection you want to edit. The window “Edit Selection” opens. Report-Edit-Selections
  2. Choose if the selection is to be included or excluded (3) from the extracted data.
  3. Select an operator (Equal, GreaterThan, etc.) from the Option drop-down list (4).
    Tip: Use the In operator when mapping list parameters to selections.
  4. Enter the selection in the respective Low and High fields. The High field is active for input when the between or not between operator was selected.
  5. Optional: click [Add Selection] (5) to add conditions.
  6. Click [OK] (6) to confirm the selections.

Tip: If you use multiple selection parameters, create a variant in SAP. Use the variant instead of entering selections.

Data Format #

Warning! Values must use the internal SAP representation:
Date: The date 01.01.1999 has the internal representation 19990101 (YYYYMMDD)
Year period: The year period 001.1999 has the internal representation 1999001 (YYYYPPP)
Numbers: Numbers must contain the leading zeros, e.g., customer number 1000 has the internal representation 0000001000.

Input that does not use the internal SAP representation results in error messages e.g.:

ERPConnect.ABAPProgramException: RfcInvoke failed(RFC_ABAP_MESSAGE): Enter date in the format _._._