Constraint Doctor

 

Go back to your first day of learning variant configuration - what's the one thing you remember? For me, it was the complete lack of examples provided by SAP.

That's right, those 'vomit colored' help documents in that 3.0F client, with some sort of theoretical, twisted way of coding a product line. It never made any sense, and furthermore you usually were more confused then when you started.

I'm an engineer by training - with a love of computers and programming. In my career, I find my management asking me to be more of an interpreter then a product modeler or process analyst - bridging the gap between IT & engineering - converting from "one language to another".

I view my role at CWG just as that - this time bridging the gap between theory and practice. I'll take difficult configuration concepts from all sources, including other CWG articles, the CWG forums, editors commentary, and even my own real world experiences - simplifying them and providing clear examples of execution in the R/3 environment using what I view as an appropriate modeling technique.

This is a difficult road. I'll never claim to have the right answer - and I'm always open to a better solution. Please send ideas, comments, or your own difficult problems/solutions to theconstraintdr@meierzone.com.

(Please note: You will probably not get an immediate response to your question. If your issue is of a time-sensitive nature, I suggest you use the CWG Forums)

Send me an email!!
Comments to: Jeremy Meier, Configuration Example Editor

Restricting Complex Number Ranges Using Variant Tables

Copyright © by Jeremy Meier A few years back, I was presented with a difficult dilemma - restricting multiple numeric ranges, dependant with character values. Normally, if it's simple enough you can just use constraints & "if statements" to get what you need - but this was really complicated - full of "or's, and's, in's and not's". Yuck. Out of the box SAP is no help to this. It doesn't support direct ranges (1-10) and specifying out 10 lines of nearly identical data is a maintenance nightmare.