Sap Sale Module: RE: [sap-log-sd] Conversion of partners in customer master?

Posted by Dave Thornburgh (SAP JOAT)
on Aug 22 at 8:35 PM

Adriano -

First things first. You sound as if you are just beginning your SAP journey. Please take my advice: Don't think about things in terms of "which table to update". It's fine to talk about "which table has the information I need", but with SAP, you will almost NEVER want to directly update a table. There are tens of thousands of tables, with relationships between tables that range from trivial to hypercritical. It is virtually impossible to duplicate all of SAP's logic in order to ensure table updates are correct and well planned. Instead of thinking along those lines, the better route is to ask "how does SAP allow a user to change this data?", and then discover a way to automate that already existing process. For example, the simple act of creating a customer master might update as few as three tables, or it may affect dozens of tables - depending on the complexity of the customer master.

As far as how to handle the business partners, that depends on what a business partner really was in your old system. You need to have someone who completely understands the meaning of a Partner Function in SAP, as well as Partner Determination. Then you need to teach that person what a legacy business partner was, and have them translate between the two models. It also helps if the various functional departments have already developed any extension to the SAP Partner scheme, so that can be taken into account. These extensions are frequently used to accommodate requirements like sales employees, additional 'customer' roles, and so on.

As for the developers, the logic is going to be pretty strictly dictated by the functional reality of how to translate from your old model to the SAP model. Once they figure that out, there are various techniques they can use (LSMW, BDC, eCATT, BAPI - tools of the SAP developer's trade) to get the job done. Developers will debate the merits of each until the end of time, but it mostly boils down to differences in skill and style.

Dave

---------------Original Message---------------
From: Adriano Lopez
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2011 7:34 AM
Subject: Conversion of partners in customer master?

Hello experts,

In the conversion of customer master records from legacy system to the ECC 6.0, how do we handle the business partners? Which table to update? And the logic for the developers?

Thank you in advance.

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