Although our connections are now so fast we may still need sometimes to compress data before attaching to mail or downloading into PC. SAP has possibilities to ZIP the content in class CL_ABAP_ZIP and I've used this class to create a method to simplify the process of zipping.

First of all class CL_ABAP_ZIP is zipping xstrings so I'll provide you the possibility to pass not only xstring variables but also a string, soli_tab or solix_tab. These are commonly used type when coding files content.

I guess all of us often had to work with files in ABAP usign some of available FM like 'GUI_UPLOAD', 'GUI_DOWNLOAD' etc. When doing so sometimes there is a need to display in ALV the filename with or without extension . There are plenty of FM that helps to do so but the have one disadvantage -> they base on 3 digit extension and sometimes they have limited path size.

But where stadard SAP cannot help you, then you have to helpyourself with ABAP. There is a really simple way to split filename/extension without any restrictions known from standard FM. Here is a code for a method, but you can use it also to create form or FM. 

If during creation of purchase requisition you've attached some documents into requisition and you convert requisition to purchase order then the attachments aren't copy to PO. But you can do it either by daily job or by the implementation of user-exit if you know how to link GOS object to PO. I faced a request to copy attachments from PR to PO, but what I did was in fact just linking existing attachment to PO. In that way you do not double the same content on server. Bellow you can find the code of an function module which uses 'BINARY_RELATION_CREATE' and 'BINARY_RELATION_CREATE_COMMIT'.

• Importing

I_EBELN TYPE EBELN -> Purchase Order number
I_COMMIT TYPE C     -> Do you want to do the commit?

• Tables

T_EBAN STRUCTURE EBAN  -> Table with PR lines to check GOS relations

• Exceptions

BINARY_RELATION_CREATE_ERROR

You've seen many times that in standard SAP transactions the dates can be presented in days, weeks and months although in database it's saved as normal DATS type. For sure in same table you can find the field called "External date type" which is used to convert standard date to external one. If you're designing a program in which you want to use same functionallity then FM 'PERIOD_AND_DATE_CONVERT_OUTPUT' and 'PERIOD_AND_DATE_CONVERT_INPUT' comes with a help.

At the very begining when I started to develop in ABAP I was wondering why I cannot clear all global data at once after I do all my calculations? As this is something that it's very useful when you create a report which just show some figures and you don't need anymore all the internal tables or objects that you used to prepare output table. So to free memory then just before calling ALV I was always refreshing all tables and clearing work areas, but this was something that had to be done manually so I was a little bit angry that I cannot automize it... and then I started to look for the way how to automize it.

I knew that SE80 is displaying all globals but I couldn't find how it's done there. As you may know debuggin the code which was done by SAP is creepy usually and after spending some hours on that I gave up. But it returned someday I just simply saw FM 'RS_PROGRAM_INDEX' and that was enough to create fast a method to free all global data for me. 

So let's start with definition. We will need a range type which we will use to call the method with objects to be excluded from clearing (like ALV output table or ALV objects)