The IDoc Control Record

The very first record of an IDoc package is always a control record. The structure of this
control record is the DDic structure EDIDC and describes the contents of the data contained in
the package.

The control record carries all the administrative information of the IDoc, such as its
origin, its destination and a categorical description of the contents and context of
the attached IDoc data. This is very much like the envelope or cover sheet that
would accompany any paper document sent via postal mail.

For R/3 inbound processing, the control record is used by the standard IDoc
processing mechanism to determine the method for processing the IDoc. This
method is usually a function module but may be a business object as well. The
processing method can be fully customised.

Once the IDoc data is handed over to a processing function module, you will no
longer need the control record information. The function modules are aware of the
individual structure of the IDoc type and the meaning of the data. In other words: for
every context and syntax of an IDoc, you would write an individual function module
or business object (note: a business object is also a function module in R/3) to deal
with.

The control record has a fixed pre-defined structure, which is defined in the data
dictionary as EDIDC and can be viewed with SE11 in the R/3 data dictionary. The
header of our example will tell us, that the IDoc has been received from a sender
with the name PROCLNT100 and sent to the system with the name DEVCLNT100 .
It further tells us that the IDoc is to be interpreted according to the IDoc definition
called MATMAS01 .