Simple Data Explorer

Simple Data Explorer (SDE)

Multi-window explorer for SAP tables, views and CDS views — with per-window select-options that re-read the data as you type, drag-and-drop links between windows, foreign-key navigation, a join builder, pivot tables and a generated Open SQL statement you can edit and run.

Version 2 (SelecTor) lives in src/ and is the version documented here. The older single-file viewer is still shipped for old releases — see History and older documentation.

Also outside SAP GUI. The table grid with its select-options, the join builder and the pivot are available in Eclipse ADT and in VS Code through VERTEX · Marketplace.

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Table of contents

• Overview
• Requirements
• Installation
  • abapGit
  • Standalone single-file program
  • Legacy one-file versions
• Quick start
• Selection screen
• The table window
  • Toolbar
  • Select-options panel
  • Filter shortcuts
  • Empty columns
  • Languages and technical names
  • Sorting
• Links between windows
  • Double-click navigation
  • Drag and drop
  • Table link graph
• HR and HCM plugins
  • Payroll clusters
• Tools: joins, pivot tables, SQL
  • Join builder
  • Pivot tables
  • Generated SQL
  • Saving and loading layouts
• Repository layout
• Architecture
• History and older documentation
• Author
• License

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Overview

• Multiple windows. Open as many tables as your screen allows, including the same table several times. Every window is an independent dialog box with its own data and filters.
• A selection panel per window. It opens and closes with the arrow icon. All standard search helps are connected, including the special ones for personnel numbers (PAxxxx-PERNR) and organizational management objects (HRPxxxx).
• Reactivity. Data is re-read as soon as a filter changes — no round-trip through a separate selection screen, no loss of context.
• Empty columns are hidden by default, because most SAP tables are mostly empty. One menu entry brings them back.
• Multilingualism. All languages installed in the system are supported: column and table names are translated on the fly, and technical field names are one of the options.
• Navigation. Double-click a value to open the checked table behind the foreign key; drag values from one window into the filters of another; look at the link graph as in SE11.
• HR/HCM plugins. Jumps to PA20/PP01, infotype long texts, wage type texts, organizational management links, payroll cluster viewer.
• Tools. Build joins from the foreign keys the dictionary already knows, build pivot tables, read the generated Open SQL, edit it, run it, and save the whole layout to a file.
• Tables, views and CDS. Transparent and cluster tables, DDIC views (including the maintenance views of SM30) and the SQL views generated for CDS entities.

Requirements

• SAP GUI for Windows. The whole UI is built on CL_GUI_* controls (ALV grid, HTML viewer, splitter, dialog boxes); layouts are saved through frontend services.
• SAP_BASIS 7.50 or higher for the sources in src/. For older systems use the legacy one-file versions.
• Display rights on the data you open. SDE reads with plain Open SQL and performs no S_TABU_* authority checks of its own — treat it as a developer/support tool and install it accordingly.

Installation

abapGit

1. In abapGit, create an online repository for https://github.com/ysichov/Simple-Data-Explorer.git and assign it to a package (for example $ZSDE for a local one).
2. Pull, then activate all objects.
3. Run program ZSDE2 (SE38 / SA38).

Standalone single-file program

No package, no abapGit, nothing to activate except one report:

1. Create a report (for example Z_SDE_STANDALONE) in SE38.
2. Paste the contents of src/z_sde_standalone.prog.abap.
3. Activate and run.

The file is generated from the sources in src/ — do not edit it by hand.

Legacy one-file versions

Generation 1 of the viewer, kept for old systems and for the HR flavour:

File	Target	Notes
SDE_702.abap	SAP_BASIS 7.02	Report YS_SDE
SDE_750_HR.abap	SAP_BASIS 7.50	HR/HCM build, infotype texts (PAxxxx-ITXEX)

Quick start

1. Run ZSDE2.
2. Pick the object type with the buttons in the toolbar of the selection screen: Tables, Views, CDS.
3. Type a name and press Enter — a window opens. Type the next name and press Enter again to open another window; the selection screen stays where it is.
4. Filter in the left panel of a window; the grid follows every change.
5. Press the Tools icon in a window to build joins and pivot tables on top of it.

Selection screen

Field	Meaning
Tables / Views / CDS	Switches the input field. Tables accepts transparent and cluster tables, Views any DDIC view (F4 lists the maintenance views of SM30), CDS the SQL view generated for a CDS entity (application class SDGV).
Table / View / CDS name	F4 is available in all three modes. The name is checked before the window opens.
Max rows	Row limit of every read, 500 by default. It also caps the statements the Tools area runs.
Folder for saved joins	Frontend folder for .sdj layout files, C:\temp\sde\ by default. F4 opens a directory browser.

The table window

A window is a dialog box split into the selection panel (left, collapsible) and the data grid (right). When the Tools area is opened, it is docked below the data.

Toolbar

Button	Description
Show/hide select-options	Collapses the selection panel and gives the width to the grid.
Refresh	Re-reads the data with the current filters.
Load join layout	Reads a .sdj file; opens the Tools area if needed.
Save join layout	Writes the current tables, fields, mode, filters and SQL to a .sdj file.
Languages	Menu: Technical name plus every language installed in the system.
Empty columns options	Menu: Hide empty columns / Show empty columns.
Table links	Opens the graphical link visualization.
Tools	Docks the join and pivot builder below the data (click again to hide).
Sort ascending / descending	Builds ORDER BY on the marked columns — see Sorting.
Standard ALV functions	Shows or hides the standard ALV toolbar (export, layouts, find, …).

Select-options panel

One row per field, with the dictionary information next to it — data element, domain, data type and length. This is meant to save time while writing technical specifications.

• F4 on a row opens the standard search help of the field. Values already entered in other rows are passed to the help, so the proposals stay in the context of the current filter.
• Double-click opens the dictionary: on the ELEMENT column SE11 with the data element, on the DOMAIN column SE11 with the domain, on any other column the documentation of the data element.
• The option icon opens the standard sign/option dialog (EQ, BT, NE, CP, …).
• The more icon opens the complex selections dialog — an arbitrary number of ranges per field, exactly as on a normal selection screen. The icon shows whether ranges exist.
• Fields whose search help is a short value list get a drop-down in the input cell.
• The context menu offers Clear Select-Options and Delete receiver (see Drag and drop).

Filter shortcuts

Typing is interpreted the way an experienced user expects:

Input	Result
a value in low	I EQ value
values in low and high	I BT low high
a value containing *, %, + or &	I CP pattern
clearing sign and option	the row is cleared
a date or time	converted from the user format into the internal one

Empty columns

Empty columns are hidden after every read, so a 200-column table shows only what actually carries data. Show empty columns brings them all back.

Languages and technical names

The Languages menu lists every language installed in the system plus Technical name. The choice re-translates the grid headers and the labels of the selection panel.

Sorting

The sort buttons do not sort the fetched rows on the frontend — that would sort the wrong 500 rows. They build an ORDER BY and read again from the database. Mark one or more columns (or just place the cursor in one) and press the sort icon. Because the statement is built by the Tools area, sorting requires Tools to be open; the program says so if it is not.

Links between windows

Double-click navigation

The colour of a column tells what a double-click will do:

Colour	Meaning
Blue	The field has a check table: it opens in a new window, filtered by the value you clicked.
Green	A plugin handles the field — a transaction, or a related table that no foreign key describes.
Grey	A column of the text table, joined to the data automatically so the language-dependent text stands next to the code.
White	A plain field.

Drag and drop

Select one or more cells or a whole column in a data grid and drag them onto the selection panel of another window. The dragged column turns into buttons in the source window, an inheritance indicator appears next to the receiving field, and clicking a button in the source re-reads the target window with that value. Dragging between two selection panels works the same way. A data model of several tables comes alive in about a minute.

Delete receiver in the context menu of the selection panel breaks the link again.

Table link graph

The Table links button opens the graphical visualization of the foreign key relations of the current table, the same picture SE11 draws.

HR and HCM plugins

Links that no foreign key describes are hard-coded as plugins.

By data element:

Data element	Action
PERSNO	PA20 for the personnel number, with infotype, subtype and validity dates prefilled
HROBJID	PP01 for the OM object
LGART	Wage type text table T512W
ITXEX	Long text of the infotype record, in a text viewer window
SUBTY	Subtype table of the infotype

By table and field:

From	To
PA0001-PLANS / ORGEH / STELL	HRP1000, object type S / O / C
HRP1001-SCLAS / SOBID	The related OM object — it is put into the search parameters of the same window, so you can walk the structure link by link
HRP1001-ADATANR	The additional data table of the relation
HRP1002 / HRP1035 / HRP1222, field TABNR	HRT1002 / HRT1035 / HRT1222
PA2006-QUONR	PTQUODED, and from there back to PA2006 / PA2001
HRPY_RGDIR-SEQNR	Payroll cluster viewer

Payroll clusters

A double-click on a sequence number in HRPY_RGDIR opens the payroll result of that personnel number and sequence number as a tree: every cluster table of the result is a node, and each node opens in a normal SDE window with filters, empty-column handling and everything else.

Tools: joins, pivot tables, SQL

The Tools button docks a builder below the data of the window: an HTML canvas on top (the join graph, or the pivot cross), the field list, the generated SQL, and the result grid.

Two cards switch the mode — Join and Pivot table. Clicking the active card again turns the mode off and leaves the plain table behind.

Join builder

• Candidates are discovered from the dictionary around the base table: outgoing foreign keys, incoming ones and text tables. Any other table can be added by name.
• Selecting a candidate gives it an alias (T0, T1, T2, …) that never changes afterwards, so filters and sorts stay valid while you rearrange the join.
• Each joined table has a join type (INNER / LEFT OUTER) and an ON condition, filled from the key pairs and editable by hand.
• Tables can be reordered; fields can be picked with select all / clear / keys, per table or one by one, reordered by dragging or by click-to-move, and selected with a lasso. The field texts follow a language of your choice.
• The selection panel of the window gains every field of every joined table under its alias (T1_CONNID), so filters can be set on any table of the join. Filters of tables that leave the join are dropped instead of breaking the statement.

Pivot tables

The pivot mode replaces the canvas with the pivot cross: ROWS run down the left side, COLUMNS across the top, MEASURES fill the body, and the available fields sit below it. The SELECT list of the join is collapsed while pivoting — it has no effect on the pivot beyond deciding which fields are on offer — so the generated statement takes the whole lower half.

• Every section starts with three slots and grows by one more as soon as it fills up, so there is always a free slot to aim at.
• Fill a slot by dragging a field chip into it, or click the chip and then click the slot. Chips can be dragged from one slot to another to reorder them or to move them between sections; the cross on a chip removes it.
• Every measure chip carries an aggregation: SUM, COUNT, MIN, MAX, AVG for numeric fields, COUNT / MIN / MAX otherwise. The same field can be measured several times, once per aggregate.
• Fields already placed are dimmed in the list below; in a join every chip keeps the color of its table.

One statement does the aggregation: the join is grouped by the row and the column fields together, so every line of the result is one cell. The matrix itself is spread in ABAP — a dynamically specified SELECT list cannot carry the CASE expressions a SQL-side matrix would need, and the parser rejects them. Up to 50 distinct column value combinations become columns; a blank value is shown as (empty). Pivot works on the base table and on a join alike.

• Fixed values become text. A field whose domain has fixed values (like a status or a class) shows the domain's short text instead of its raw code, both in a spread column's header and in a plain row. A checkbox-style field without domain text of its own (a FLAG) shows its own field name for the checked value instead of a bare X.
• Sorting the grid sorts the matrix itself — the pivot's grouped statement has no column that corresponds to a spread column, so ORDER BY cannot reach it the way it does for the plain join.

Generated SQL

The statement is always visible below the panel. The edit link turns it into a text area: change anything you like and run it. UP TO n ROWS, ORDER BY and GROUP BY are recognized and applied separately, and the row limit of the selection screen still applies when the statement does not carry one. The result appears in the grid next to the field list.

Filters set in the window feed the WHERE clause, so the SQL text and the result follow the selection panel while you type.

Saving and loading layouts

Save join layout / Load join layout in the toolbar write and read .sdj files in the folder from the selection screen (C:\temp\sde\ by default). A layout is tab-separated plain text — readable in any editor — and contains the base table, the joined tables with their conditions, the field list and its order, the mode, the filters, the ORDER BY and a manually edited statement if there is one. Loading a layout restores all of it, even before the selection panel has been opened.

Repository layout

Path	Contents
src/	The program: one report, the global classes, one interface, plus the generated standalone report
SDE_702.abap, SDE_750_HR.abap	Legacy one-file versions (not part of the abapGit package)
generate_standalone.sh, generate_standalone.bat, fix_event_order.py	Developer tooling that regenerates the standalone report from src/
AGENTS.md	Rules for automated contributors

Architecture

Object	Responsibility
zsde2 (report)	Selection screen, object type switch, entry point
zcl_sde_appl	Global state: list of open windows, languages, icons, parameters
zcl_sde_table_viewer	One window — grid, toolbar, data read, navigation, docked tools
zcl_sde_sel_opt	Selection panel: rows, options, ranges, F4, drop-downs, dictionary jumps
zcl_sde_transmitter, zcl_sde_receiver	Event link that makes one window drive another
zcl_sde_dragdrop, zcl_sde_dd_data	Drag and drop between grids and selection panels
zcl_sde_tools	Join and pivot builder: HTML UI, SQL generation, result grid, layout files
zcl_sde_pivot, zif_sde_pivot_types	Pivot model, builder panel and the grouped statement
zcl_sde_plugins	Dictionary and HR navigation rules
zcl_sde_py_cluster_viewer	Payroll result as a tree
zcl_sde_text_viewer	Infotype long texts
zcl_sde_rtti	Dynamic types, field catalogs, drop-down lists
zcl_sde_sql	Dynamic reads and existence checks
zcl_sde_ddic, zcl_sde_common	Dictionary and ALV helpers
zcl_sde_popup	Base class of every dialog window
z_sde_standalone (report)	Everything above merged into one file — generated, never edited

History and older documentation

Generation 1 of SDE was a single report for viewing tables and the links between them; this repository is its successor and the description above covers both generations. The wiki of this repository documented generation 1 and is superseded by this file.

The repository used to be called SDE; links of the form github.com/ysichov/SDE/... still redirect here.

• Simple Data Explorer — feature description in Russian

Author

Yurii Sychov — e-mail · blog · LinkedIn

ALV listbox handling is based on bizhuka/eui.

License

MIT