BFFs With BRF+

For as long as computer systems have existed, users wanted to have some options to maintain business rules without relying on the moody IT department. Most of these rules look like “if document type is A, then do this, unless it’s 2 pm on Tuesday”. And with that usually you’d get a requirement “can we put that ‘A’ value where we can change it?”

Creating a custom table (or even several) to maintain such values is actually quite a reasonable solution. And be sure to check out this great blog post for a neat ready-to-use option.

For some time, Z tables were inexplicably considered “bad,” leading developers to reach for standard solutions that were somehow deemed better. Not sure who started spreading the ridiculous idea of using TVARVC table as a catch-all for random business rule values, but sadly, it spread through SAP systems like wildfire - with a similarly disastrous effect.

SAP wasn’t asleep at the wheel though. With NetWeaver 7.0 EHP1 release, the business rule framework called BRF+ was released. But while the framework itself is solid, it did receive a kiss of death from slow and clunky Web Dynpro UI. And as this excellent article points out, “BRF+ is an interesting tool, but it’s not the revolution SAP might have hoped it would be”.

Of course, with push to the cloud, there is even more rule functionality (see the diagram in this video). But something tells me Z_ PUT_ALL_CODES_HERE will continue to exist in many SAP systems. JP