How to Use BAPI_CUSTOMER_FIND to search for Customers in SAP

BAPI's are a useful way of retrieving data in SAP for testing purposes - even if they are not the recommended way of retrieving data from SAP from external systems (you should use Enterprise Services for that).  I had a problem with the quirks of one of the BAPIs today - the SAP BAPI "BAPI_CUSTOMER_FIND" wouldn't allow me to perform a wildcard search on the Customer Name (the KNA1.NAME1 field). Exact matches worked fine. Turns out there is a field "PL_HOLD" in the input parameters that has to have a value of "X" in order for wildcard matches to work at all.

So the process is:

1. Work out the field and table name that you want with SAP transaction /nse11
2. Test the BAPI:
3. Make sure that MAX_COUNT is 200, or the desired maximum number of return values. Use 0 for an unlimited number of return results.
4. Make sure PL_HOLD is X to enable wildcard matching
5. Put the TableName (e.g. KNA1 for customer master), field name (e.g. NAME1 for customer name) and the wildcard in the SELOPT_TAB table
6. Run your BAPI to perform the search.

Of couse you wouldn't need to worry about this if you are just using SOAPUI and the CustomerSimpleByNameAndAddressQuery enterprise service as it has no such flags to enable the wildcard searching - but that's another story.

DDK