www.it-ebooks.info Mastering SQL Queries for SAP Business One Utilize the power of SQL queries to bring Business Intelligence to your small to medium-sized business Gordon Du PUBLISHING professional expertise distilled BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI Do www.it-ebooks.info Mastering SQL Queries for SAP Business One Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: May 2011 Production Reference: 2190511 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-849682-36-7 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by David Guettirrez (bilbaorocker@yahoo.co.uk) www.it-ebooks.info Credits Author Gordon Du Reviewers Zal Parchem Muddassar Imran Wolfgang Niefert Acquisition Editor Stephanie Moss Development Editor Susmita Panda Technical Editor Pallavi Kachare Copy Editor Laxmi Subramanian Project Coordinator Vishal Bodwani Proofreader Aaron Nash Indexer Monica Ajmera Graphics Geetanjali Sawant Production Coordinator Arvindkumar Gupta Cover Work Arvindkumar Gupta www.it-ebooks.info About the Author Gordon Du studied System Engineering and Computer Science at the Nankai University in Tianjin, China. He has over 28 years of experience in diversied information technology elds. His experience with SQL goes back to 1987. Gordon was the rst person in China to successfully implement an international software package for a Chinese investment-only company in 1995. Gordon has been the top contributor on the SAP Business One forum since August 2008. He has been awarded 45,000 points as of January 16, 2011. This is the highest lifetime points recorded by SAP Community Network for a non-SAP employee since 2004. Over 25 percent of Gordon's points are related to solving SQL query questions and problems posted by other forum members. Here are some links demonstrating this. His SCN prole link for reference: http://forums.sdn.sap.com/profile.jspa?userID=4130357 His rst blog on SCN: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/17099 The congratulations and thanks thread to his 35,000 points from forum users: http://forums.sdn.sap.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1718298&tstart=0 Gordon has worked and trained extensively in China, Singapore, USA, and Canada. He also holds the following certicates: a Microsoft Certied System Administrator, Microsoft Certied System Engineer, and a Microsoft Certied Database Administrator. Gordon is planning to write a series of books related to SAP Business One in response to the demand from many SAP Business One users and consultants. www.it-ebooks.info Acknowledgement Special thanks goes to my wife, Lisa, whose love and encouragement helped me to complete this book. Thank you, my son Mason and his ancée, Ava, for your support and reviews. Thank you to Zal Parchem, who not only inspired me from the beginning, but also provided a professional technical review. Thanks to the staff at Packt Publishing and all my friends who supported me in writing this book. Among all my friends, MS Christine Malone has given me the greatest support by her excellent nal proof reading and editing. Last but not least, thank you to everyone who posted on the SAP Business One forum providing me the opportunity to solve so many SQL query problems. www.it-ebooks.info About the Reviewers Zal Parchem has been in the business world working in the Information Systems area for over 31 years. For the past 10 years, he has been working as an Independent Consultant, concentrating on helping small to midsize companies install and customize their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. He has restricted his work efforts to the SAP Business One (SAP B1) ERP system and is actively involved in many SAP Forums, SAP Blogging areas, and the Wiki sections for SAP B1. He works with SAP, SAP B1 Partners, and Customers around the world. For the past three years, Zal Parchem has been using SQL extensively in SAP B1 for reporting and customization purposes in SAP B1. He has been employed in a variety of industries, with company sizes ranging from six personnel to over 250,000 employees. Having retired from The Home Depot in 2001, he started his career as an Independent Consultant. He has also written a "guerrilla handbook" titled Project Methodology and Documentation for SAP Business One Implementations. He actively reviews all SAP B1 books available in print; his reviews can be seen online at Amazon. I would like to thank Gordon Du for this opportunity to do the technical aspect of his work in SQL. Gordon is the most active participant in the SAP B1 forums where he helps dozens of people daily. I am honored to know Gordon as a Fellow Forum Friend (FFF) and to have been asked to work with PacktPub on this publication, which is certainly going to extend Gordon's ability to help even more individuals to be productive and effective in the use of SQL inside SAP Business One. www.it-ebooks.info Muddassar Imran is a passionate Web Developer. He is the Web Developer at Page and Moy, UK. He is a First Class Graduate from DMU (De Montfort University, Leicester UK) and was awarded the best nal year project award from BCS (British Computer Society). Moreover, he is a Professional Member of BCS. He is enthusiastic about modern expert system and database administration. He has aesthetic skills in writing complex SQL Queries, ASP.NET, VB.NET and AJAX. Imran was born in Gujranwala, a small city famous for its peaceful atmosphere. He attended Suffa Secondary School at 10th Grade and achieved the highest scores in his city. He got admission at the Government College University, Lahore for further education in Computer Science. He went to Malaysia for higher education and nished a Higher Diploma in Computing Studies from KDU College Malaysia. Then he went back to Pakistan and worked with Wateen Telecom Pvt. Ltd. and Telenor for two years, primarily developing web-based applications and working on automation projects. Muddassar then traveled to the United Kingdom to attend the De Montfort University. In 2010, he received his Bachelors in Computer Science. While studying at DMU, he was working with Venus Packaging Solutions Ltd. As a VB.NET Developer until March 2011 and then joined Page & Moy in April 2011. Further, Imran writes on his blog ( www.blog.mudasar.co.uk) and his personal website is www.mudasar.com. For relaxation, he likes to workout at the gym and travel. After passing B-Tech in Computer Science and Engineering Wolfgang Niefert joined ITSL Technologies as a .Net developer in June 2007. He worked on ERSys (ERP Systems) and internal CRM product of ITSL Technologies. He then moved to SAP as TechnoFunctional consultant, and also provided training on TB1000, TB1100, TB1200 books. After that he joined Sapphire systems in June 2010 as SAP SDK Support consultant. He is an active contributor to the SAP sdn community. He got gold contribution status in the year 2010 in sdn community. I would like to thank my family and my team for helping and supporting me. www.it-ebooks.info www.PacktPub.com Support les, eBooks, discount offers and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support les and downloads related to your book. 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Find out when new books are published by following @PacktEnterprise on Twitter, or the Packt Enterprise Facebook page. www.it-ebooks.info Table of Contents Preface 1 Section 1 – SQL Query Basic Chapter 1: SAP Business One Query Users and Query Basics 9 Who can benet from using SQL Queries in SAP Business One? 9 Consultant 10 Developer 10 SAP Business One end user 10 Non-SAP Business One users 11 SQL query and related terms 11 RDBMS 11 Table 11 Field 12 SQL 12 T-SQL 13 Subsets of SQL 13 Query 13 Data dictionary 14 SAP Business One—Database tables reference 14 Naming convention of tables for SAP Business One 15 Three letter words 15 "O" tables 16 "A" tables 16 Document header tables 16 Document line tables 16 Important table examples 17 Table links—the key for the right query 17 Primary key 17 Foreign key 18 www.it-ebooks.info [...]... What you need for this book • SAP Business One installation or trial system • An eagerness to get more pertinent information from your database • A table reference from help file REFDB.CHM in SAP Business One SDK Help Center Who this book is for This book is written for every kind of SAP Business One user who needs to obtain information, which is not available in the standard reports SQL query is also... need to embed SQL query to your codes to complete your Software Development Kit (SDK) project SAP Business One end user If you are simply a normal SAP Business One end user, you may need this book more This is because SQL query usage is best applied for the companies who have SAP Business One live data Only you as the end users know better than anyone else what you are looking for to make Business Intelligence... alternatives to SAP Business One authorizations and standard business Processes The audience for this book includes Consultant, Programmer, Administrator, and many other end users In fact, every SAP Business One customer could benefit from this book To get the right information at the right time is one of the most important tasks to bring SAP Business One' s power to small and midsize businesses This... is a very good reference called SAP Business One Database Tables Reference readily available through SAP Business One SDK help Centre You can find the details in the following section SAP Business One Database tables reference The database tables reference file named REFDB.CHM is the one we are looking for SDK is usually installed on the same server as the SAP Business One database server Normally, the... complete more Section 1, SQL Query Basic comprises three chapters: Chapter 1, SAP Business One Query Users and Query Basics, discusses the basic concepts and knowledge needed to use SQL query in SAP Business One You will learn a clear definition of SQL query, the data dictionary, and table links Chapter 2, Query Generator and Query Wizard, introduces two basic tools for SAP Business One Query Generator... describes the security for query by SAP Business One and also the query associated with approval processes You will learn how to handle query security by utilizing query groups You will also learn user query for approval procedures with query examples Chapter 6, SQL Query for Formatted Search (FMS), emphasizes one of the most frequently used and error-prone processes to create SQL Query for Formatted Search... business operations BI often aims to support better business decision-making That means BI can be used in any type of solution as long as the technology allows the supporting business decision making process In this book, you will learn why BI could be a perfect fit for SAP Business One Hence, it will benefit small-to-midsized businesses SQL Query is one of the most powerful tools in SAP Business One. .. description, type, size, related tables, default value, and constraints Naming convention of tables for SAP Business One To help you understand the previous mentioned data dictionary quickly, we will be going through the naming conventions for the table in SAP Business One Three letter words Most tables for SAP Business One have four letters The only exceptions are numberending tables, if the numbers are greater... has very specific scope for the terms "SQL" and "query" Please read through this section carefully first if you find that the scope of the book is not right for your needs [ 12 ] www.it-ebooks.info Chapter 1 T -SQL We have to limit the scope of the term SQL in this book First of all, since SAP Business One is built on Microsoft SQL Server database, SQL here means TransactSQL or T -SQL in brief It is a Microsoft's/Sybase's... create working SQL queries, you not only need to know how to write it, but also need to have a clear view regarding the relationship between tables and where to find the information required As you know, SAP Business One is built on Microsoft SQL Server Data dictionary is a great tool for creating SQL queries Before we start, a good Data Dictionary is essential for the database Fortunately, there is . perfect t for SAP Business One. Hence, it will benet small-to-midsized businesses. SQL Query is one of the most powerful tools in SAP Business One that is related to BI. SAP Business One is usually. 1 Section 1 – SQL Query Basic Chapter 1: SAP Business One Query Users and Query Basics 9 Who can benet from using SQL Queries in SAP Business One? 9 Consultant 10 Developer 10 SAP Business One end. his work efforts to the SAP Business One (SAP B1) ERP system and is actively involved in many SAP Forums, SAP Blogging areas, and the Wiki sections for SAP B1. He works with SAP, SAP B1 Partners,