Decision making point

[Former Member]

Hi guys,

Can you tell me on what basis we take a decision which table should be the Main table and which as subtables from a given set of tables.

Example. Lets say there are 6 tables given by the client. How can we decide which should be the main table and which should be subtables.

Thanks,

MS Reddy

[michael_theis · Accepted solution]

Hi Reddy,

as a common rule main tables should be used for objects, that can live on their own. Other sub-objects or customizing values should be part of subtables. You should have a look at the tables of your customer and answer the following questions:

- does the table describe a full object?

- do you want to match & merge objects from this table?

- does the table relate to other tables?

- do you want to distribute records for this table w/o the need of adding other tables?

==> this indicates an object that should be part of a MDM main table

Take a Business Partner with addresses as example. Business Partners are surely part of a main table. In SAP systems you can distribute business partner, in MDM you want to match and merge them, Business Partners might have relationships, and so on. Surely a Business Partner has an address. Addresses are stored within SAP in different database table. Question: do you choose a main table or a tuple/QLT for an address? I'd go for a tuple/QLT. The reason is that each address needs a Business Partner to be a valueable information. An address itself without any parent object is not really usable in SAP systems. So the address is a sub-object of the Business Partner and thus should not be an independent main table.

Best regards

Michael

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

In addition main table will have the bulk of the data fields referred by sub tables.

To know this we need to know the relationship between the entities(6 tables in your case) which can be done again by ER model.

best regards

Ravi

[Former Member]

Hi MS Reddy,

1) Most of the KEY fields from R/3 will be in the main table and rest of the fields giving information about the key fields will be in the lookup tables.

2) For example considering the Customer business object -

Address - Main table

Salutation (Mr/Mrs/Mess) - Lookuptable

Company Address - Lookuptable

Home Addres - Lookuptable.......etc...etc.

I guess this decesion is taken by functional consultant.

Thanks

Kolusuresh

[former_member189669]

Hi Reddy,

The majority of records is kept in the main table with the sub tables containing only a minor part of the records in the repository.

A lookup table or subtable is usually used to define the set of legal values to which a corresponding lookup field in the main table can be assigned; these tables hold the lookup information.

For example, the main table of an MDM repository of product information may include a field called Manufacturer; the actual list of allowed manufacturer names would be contained in a subtable. Only values that exist in records of the subtable can be assigned to the value of the corresponding lookup field in the main table.

Regards,

Vinay M.S