How To Extract Classification Data Multi Values Into BW Sap Version

How to Extract Data for MultiValue Characteristics to SAP BW
Applies to:
SAP BW 3.5 & 7.0.
Summary
To extract classification data to BW we need to configure and generate the datasources in transaction
CTBW. While configuring these datasources, system does not allow the entry of multi-value characteristics,
as a result data for multi-value characteristics cannot be extracted.
This article focuses on prerequisites and possible workarounds to extract data for multi-value characteristics
to BW. A step by step procedure of extracting HSE classification data for multi-value characteristics is also
discussed in this article.
Author:
Ramakrishna Gattikoppula
Company: Infosys Ltd.

Created on: 25 September 2011
Author Bio
Ramakrishna Gattikoppula is a Technology Analyst at Infosys Ltd. He has 4+ years of experience in SAP BW
and has been involved in SAP BW/BO implementation projects.
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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW
Table of Contents
Problem Statement: ............................................................................................................................................ 3
Solution: .............................................................................................................................................................. 4
The R/3 Classification System ........................................................................................................................ 4
Reason for this error ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Prerequisites and Possible Workarounds provided by SAP for extracting the classification data to BW ...... 5
Step by step procedure of extracting Multi-Value Characteristic data to BW ................................................. 6
Step1: Generation of datasource for Classification Data ............................................................................................. 6
Step 2: Enhancing the generated datasource/extract structure to add additional fields so that additional values can
be extracted from Multi-Value Characteristics.............................................................................................................. 8
Step 3: Implement BADI to update the data in the additional fields in the Enhanced Extract Structure ....................... 9
Step 4: Define additional attributes in the BW system ............................................................................................... 11
Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 14

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Problem Statement:
How to extract data for multi-value characteristics to BW
Scenario:
Let us suppose, an Organization is using HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) solution provided by SAP
(transaction CBIH82) to capture all HSE data and want to use this data to create Analytical Reports &
Interactive Dashboards to allow proper insight into this HSE data across the organization.
After analysis, ECC team concluded that standard HSE solution provided by SAP did not satisfy the
complete requirements of the organization; as a result SAP ECC team did some customizations to the
existing application using classification system to capture the complete HSE data. For e.g. - As a part of this
customization ECC team created some classes and assigned various objects to these classes. In one of
these classes a multi-valued characteristic Fire Type was added along with two other single valued
characteristics Explosion Type and Area of Damage.
Following is the screenshot of the customized application.
Now, to extract this classification data into BW, BW team needs to configure the datasources for the
classification data using transaction CTBW. While configuring these datasources in transaction CTBW an
error was faced when characteristic Fire Type was added as one of the fields in the Data Source.
Following is the error message:

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Solution:
In this article I have tried to explain:
The R/3 Classification System,
Reason for the above error,
Prerequisites and Possible Workarounds provided by SAP for extracting the classification data to
BW and
Step by step procedure of extracting Multi-Value Characteristic data to BW.
The R/3 Classification System
R/3 supports many ways of customizing it to store additional data fields. For e.g., many tables support
customer defined additions, but there is also the Cross Application Classification System.
The classification system allows you to use characteristics to describe all types of objects and to group
similar objects in classes to classify objects, in other words, so that you can find them more easily later.
The classification system allows R/3 to hold many varied additional fields against many different sorts of R/3
object, for e.g. it might allow you to store a color against a material. Here is some terminology:
Object type (Material,
Documents, Debitor,...)
The underlying table which is used for classified objects.(MARA,

DRAW, KNA1,...)
Object
A predefined business entity such as vendor, material, equipment or

customer.
Class type
Defines which object type can be classified with the class of that class
type.
Class
It groups similar objects or classes. By assigning an object to a class

the objects can be evaluated with values of characteristics of this class.
Characteristic
A property of an object, this is the new field being added. For e.g. a new
characteristic might be the Weight of a material.
Characteristic Value
A value describes a certain specification of a characteristic. For e.g.

Weight of a material might be 100 KG.
Reason for this error

The classification system supports entering multiple single values, ranges, free text, and values from predefined lists or other tables. It is very flexible, and it is this flexibility that makes it sometimes tricky to extract
data to BW.
BW system cannot manage multiple values for a characteristic of an InfoObject. Therefore, when creating
datasources for classifications (transaction CTBW), you cannot use multiple-value characteristics.

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Prerequisites and Possible Workarounds provided by SAP for extracting the classification data to
BW
Following are two prerequisites that needs to be considered if you are planning to extract classification data
to BW
1. If the characteristic value has been setup to accept multiple values, then BW cannot extract all the
values without additional configuration. For e.g., say the characteristic hobbies has been setup to
accept multiple values. In R/3 you could therefore store the values Football, Literature and
Cricket all against that single characteristic. This does not match the way BW stores data, in BW a
characteristic is expected to store only a single value.
2. The classification definitions must be the same in all R/3 clients. For e.g. if hobbies is defined as
accepting only a single value in the R/3 client 100, it must be defined in the same way in R/3 client
110 and all other clients in all systems. This is because the extractor is defined cross-client.
According to the first prerequisite we need to perform some additional configuration/workarounds to extract
data to BW. These configurations/Workarounds are discussed in the following section.
1. Apply OSS Notes 350296 and 535370, with this the error message can be changed to a warning
message; the modification is not implemented in the standard system. After this modification only
one value is transferred during the extraction i.e. if a multi-value characteristic Hobbies has values
Football, Literature and Cricket then only one of these values is transferred during extraction. In
these kind of scenarios where characteristic is assigned multiple values it is not possible to predict
which of the assigned values are extracted, if Several values are specified in the classification
system only the first value is extracted to BW and this first value extracted may differ even if same
set of Hobbies are defined for different persons.
In general this workaround is not recommended as there is loss of data and also confusion about the
characteristic value that is extracted.
2. Configure all the characteristics in the classification system to accept only a single value. In the
above example you could configure hobbies1, hobbies2 and hobbies3 to store all the values.
Doing this limits the no. of valuations, However, you can work around this in R/3 by using an
additional multiple-value characteristic i.e. first three hobbies can be stored in hobbies1, hobbies2
and hobbies3 and the remaining valuations can be stored to an additional multi-value characteristic.
This solution causes restrictions in the usage of classifications (for e.g., finding objects in classes
(transaction CL30N)). Check whether you can work with these restrictions. The most important
criteria for this check are:
- The necessary changes in the modeling in the classification system and the level of effort required
when the valuations in existing classifications have to be distributed amongst several characteristics.
- The effects of these changes (for e.g., the effects on the object search in the classification system).
3. Another approach would be to modify the extractor to add additional fields so that the additional
values are extracted. These values must then be assigned several attributes in BW. The number of
possible values is restricted by the number of additional attributes that you define.
In order for this solution to work:
- You would need to add extra fields for the additional attributes to the datasource that is created
using transaction CTBW.
- You would have to enlarge the extractor in order to be able to deliver the additional values. This
would probably require a lot of effort.
- You would have to define additional attributes in the BW system.
In the following section I have explained the step by step procedure to extract multi-value
Characteristic values to BW using one of workarounds mentioned above (Workaround No. 3 i.e. to
modify the extractor to add additional fields).

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Step by step procedure of extracting Multi-Value Characteristic data to BW

Step1: Generation of datasource for Classification Data
Once the R/3 team has finished their configuration in classification system, you can generate the datasource
and extractors to extract classification data.
This can be done using transaction CTBW, to generate datasource for classification you need to specify the
basic datasource you want to extend, then the client which you want to extract the data from and the class
type for the master data.
In this example we are extracting HSE data, so basic datasource would be 0EHS_IAL_ATTR and the class
type would be 100. Following is the screenshot of datasource in CTBW.
Generally generated data source name would be concatenation of 1CL_, first four characters of Basic
datasource and a 3 digit number.
Once the datasource has been entered, select the datasource line and double click on Characteristics in the
left hand tree.
In the characteristics screen you can enter the characteristic names which you want to include in this
datasource. Click new entries on the top left of the screen to add some characteristics. Enter Characteristic
Names, and the other fields will default correctly.
Once all the Characteristics have been entered, click save and generate source.

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This step will generate a datasource and an Extract Structure, in transaction RSA6 you can check all the
characteristics added to the generated extract structure. In the generated extract structure ACTN, RECN,
DATEFROM and DATETO will be added by default along with the characteristics specified in transaction
CTBW.

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Step 2: Enhancing the generated datasource/extract structure to add additional fields so that additional
values can be extracted from Multi-Value Characteristics
As discussed earlier a multi-value characteristic Fire Type (whose values are preconfigured by ECC team
as Phrases (i.e. Phrase Key & Phrase Text)) is added to the Class Fire & Explosion in the HSE application.
Following is the possible set of Characteristic values for this multi-value characteristic.
Phrase Key
Phrase Text
CUST-ZEHSC0000000060
Ordinary Combustibles (wood, paper, plastics)
Flammable Liquid /gases (gasoline, diesel, natural gas)
Electrical
Flammable Solids/Metals (sodium, magnesium, potassium)
Therefore for any Incident/Accident, characteristic Fire Type can be assigned with one or more values from
the above table.
For e.g.: For Incident/Accident 1001, Fire Type can be CUST-ZEHSC0000000060.
For Incident/Accident 1002, Fire Type can be CUST-ZEHSC0000000060, CUSTZEHSC0000000061 and CUST-ZEHSC0000000063
In this example we know that there can be a maximum of four Fire types for any Incident/Accident, therefore
we need to add four additional fields to the Extract Structure of the generated datasource to extract Fire type.
Following is the screenshot of the modified extract structure:
ZZFIRETYPE1, ZZFIRETYPE2, ZZFIRETYPE3 and ZZFIRETYPE4 are added to the extract structure to
store the different values of Fire Type for a particular Incident.

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As the generated datasource does not contain the Incident/Accident ID, an additional field ZZIALID is also
added to the extract structure to extract the Incident/Accident ID so that it is easier to identify the Fire Types
and Explosion types for each Incident.
Step 3: Implement BADI to update the data in the additional fields in the Enhanced Extract Structure
In the above example, the additional fields which are added to extract structure will not extract the exact
value of the fire type but a flag will be set based on the value of the fire type. This will be explained in the
following sections. If you do not wish to set a flag and extract the actual value you can do that by slightly
modifying the code given in the following sections.
For E.g.: Extracted data for Incident/Accidents 1001 and 1002 is as shown below
ACTN
Date From
Date To
RECN
Explosion
Type
Area of
Damage
Fire
Type 1
01/01/1000
12/31/9999
1234
Ballistics
11 - 100
01/01/1000
12/31/9999
1235
Ballistics
11 - 100
Fire
Type 2
Fire
Type 3
Fire
Type 4
IAL
ID
1001
1002
A BADI needs to be implemented in order to update the values (flags) for Fire Types and IAL ID
(Incident/Accident ID) in the extract structure. To implement BADI go to transaction SE24 and enter the
Class/Interface name in the Object type.
Once you have entered the Object type click on Change, in the following screen click on tab Methods. In
Methods tab enter the generated datasource name (1CL_0EHS0**) as Method, while doing this remove the
first character of the datasource name i.e. method name should be as shown in the following screenshot.
After creating the method, double click on the method name. A new screen will appear where you can write
the code to extract values for Fire Type and IAL ID.

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Following is the sample code:

To extract the IAL ID and characteristic values for Fire Type (i.e. multi-value Characteristic) we need to use
RECN and ACTN which are extracted by default in the Extractor.
IAL ID can be derived from tables CCIHT_IHVA and CCIHT_IAL by passing the RECN and ACTN.
Following is the sample code to derive IAL ID:
* Derive IAL ID using RECN and ACTN extracted
READ TABLE INT_CCIHT_IHVA INTO wa_CCIHT_IHVA
WITH KEY RECN = <L_S_DATA>-RECN
ACTN = <L_S_DATA>-ACTN BINARY SEARCH.
IF sy-subrc = 0.
READ TABLE INT_CCIHT_IAL INTO wa_CCIHT_IAL
WITH KEY RECNROOT = wa_CCIHT_IHVA-RECNROOT BINARY SEARCH.
<L_S_DATA>-ZZIALID = wa_CCIHT_IAL-IALID.
ENDIF.
Data for Multi value characteristics is mainly stored in tables AUSP and INOB, so we need to create an inner
join for these two table based on OBJEK in AUSP and CUOBJ in INOB to extract the characteristic values.
Following is the sample code to extract the characteristic values for multi-value Characteristic Fire Type
from the tables AUSP and INOB.
* Concatenate RECN and ACTN to get OBJEK
concatenate <l_s_data>-recn <l_s_data>-actn into v_objek.
* Get the Characteristic values for Multi value field Fire
Type by joining tables AUSP and INOB
select i~objek a~atwrt a~atinn
into corresponding fields of table itab_multival
from ( ausp as a inner join inob as i on a~objek = i~cuobj ) where a~mafid = 'O' and a~klart = '1
00'
and i~objek = v_objek and a~atinn = '0000004961'.
In the above statement mafid is Indicator: Object/Class which is restricted to Object, klart is the Class
Type, here it is 100 and atinn is the Internal characteristic in this case internal characteristic number for
Fire type is 0000004961. You can find the internal characteristic number for any calssification characteristic
from table CABN.
Above select statement will return a maximum of four rows for a particular RECN and ACTN (i.e. for a
particular IAL ID) as Characteristic Fire Type can be assigned a maximum of four values as mentioned in
step 1.
Now to update the fields in the extract structure a simple case statement can be used as shown below.
LOOP AT itab_multival INTO wa_multival.
CASE wa_multival-atwrt.
WHEN 'CUST-ZEHSC0000000060'.
<L_S_DATA>-ZZFIRETYPE1 = 'Y'.
WHEN OTHERS.
ENDCASE.
ENDLOOP.

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In the above statement ZZFIRETYPE1, ZZFIRETYPE2, ZZFIRETYPE3 and ZZFIRETYPE4 will be updated
based on the values entered for characteristic Fire Type in the Application (See the example data in Step 2 &
Step 3).
Snapshot of Data in AUSP table is as shown in the below table:
OBJEK
ATINN
ATWRT
000000000000001234
0000004961
000000000000001235
0000004961
000000000000001235
0000004961
000000000000001235
0000004961
If you test the extraction in transaction RSA3, extracted data for Incident/Accidents 1001 and 1002 will be as
shown in the below table:
Snapshot of Data after extraction in RSA3:
ACTN
Date From
Date To
RECN
Explosion
Type
Area of
Damage
Fire
Type 1
01/01/1000
12/31/9999
1234
Ballistics
11 - 100
01/01/1000
12/31/9999
1235
Ballistics
11 - 100
Fire
Type 2
Fire
Type 3
Fire
Type 4
IAL
ID
1001
1002
Step 4: Define additional attributes in the BW system

With the above steps, configuration on ECC side is completed. Now we would have to define additional
attributes in the BW system to accommodate data from these additional fields. To identify the attributes
easily for multi-value fields you can include a prefix for the field names e.g. FT_Ordinary Combustible, FT_
Flammable Liquid /gases etc.

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Once you have defined the additional attributes, you can map these attributes directly with the corresponding
fields in the datasource.
Following is the snapshot of the data after extraction to BW.
0EHS_IAL
FT_Ordinary
Combustibles
1001
1002

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FT_Flamable
Liquid/gases
FT_Electrical
FT_Flamable
Solids/Metals
Explosion
Type
Area of
Damage
Ballistics
11 - 100
Ballistics
11 - 100

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Related Content
SAP Note 350296: https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/350296
SAP Note Number: 1002105: https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1002105
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/PLM/Classification+at+a+glance
http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=affine%20uk&source=web&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=htt
p%3A%2F%2Faffine.co.uk%2Fcms%2Fuploads%2FHow_to_Extract_Classification_Data_into_BW.pdf&ei=
VWyETuC3BoLKrAeLxZTvDA&usg=AFQjCNGT3DkUVMNWdtQO4Knid_JrTdyZgw

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Disclaimer and Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not
supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade.
SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document,
and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk.
SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or
code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and
services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this
document.

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How to Extract Data for MultiValue Characteristics to SAP BW

Company: Infosys Ltd.

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 13

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

The underlying table which is used for classified objects.(MARA,

A predefined business entity such as vendor, material, equipment or

It groups similar objects or classes. By assigning an object to a class

A value describes a certain specification of a characteristic. For e.g.

Reason for this error

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

Step by step procedure of extracting Multi-Value Characteristic data to BW

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

Ordinary Combustibles (wood, paper, plastics)

Flammable Liquid /gases (gasoline, diesel, natural gas)

Flammable Solids/Metals (sodium, magnesium, potassium)

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

Following is the sample code:

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How to Extract Data for Multi-Value Characteristics to SAP BW

Step 4: Define additional attributes in the BW system

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Disclaimer and Liability Notice

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