SAP BW DataSource / internal vs. external format / alpha conversion

[former_member600121]

Dear all,

regarding datasource of SAP BWonHANA i have two questions. It would be great if someone can help me to answer the questions...

1 - for a certain field of the datasource (data type char 10, for instance) i have used the alpha conversion. I expected that after loading data to PSA (via executing the infopackage) i can see in that field of the loaded PSA table some 0 at the beginning of the loaded texts, as long as the texts contain only pure numbers and no space. But what i could see is only the number without any 0. This happened, no matter what type of data format (internal vs. external) is used in the datasource. Why?

2 - what is actually the difference of "external" and "internal" data format for data type char within a datasource? (i understand the difference for data type DATS and NUMC)? can you please give me an example?

Many thanks in advance

best regards

[giselle_lin]

Hi,

1. Could you check whether the conversion routine still takes effect when display the PSA data? Display data may also use external format in SE16. If the setting use conversion routine is switched on, you always see the external format and won't see the leading 0s.

2. I think it is related to the characteristic definition. There you can see some conversion routine defined for a characteristic, double click the conversion routine you will get the Function Module to convert external format to internal format and vice versa. Each conversion routine has different logic (for example material number has a specific application rule), you can play around the FM to see what exactly is the difference of external and internal format.