Part 1 – Multiple Tab Selection Screen in Module Pool Programming
For the past few years much of my time has been spent working on the newer and funkier programming techniques within SAP, such as WDA and ABAP OO, so when I was recently asked to do some dialog programming it dawned on me that I had not done done such programming in a long time. And needed to get my head around the whole concept again.
It was likely that I wasn’t alone so why not blog about it. For two reasons, one, it gave me a chance to write down what I had done for future reference and two, share my experiences with others.
What
A tab is a useful way breaking up screens into separate sections. For example breaking a selection screen into Ticket and Contract Data.
Why
Using tabs on busy, over crowded selection screen is a great way of making the selection screen tidier and aesthetically more pleasing to the user.
How
OK, so now we have see what is it and why we use it. Now we need to learn how to build it.
1) create a control for the tabstrip. This should always be created in the Top Include of the program. The type will always be of type TABSTRIP.
2) Create the tabstrip control on the screen via transaction SE51.
Click on icon 
then size the Tabstrip control to the required size. The default number of tabs is always defaulted to two.
Give the tabstrips a meaningful name and double click on the first tabstrip.
The screen painter attributes box will pop up.
Enter a function code and a Ref Field. The Red Field needs to be the same for all tabs.
Repeat this for all the tabs making sure a different function code is used for each tab.
3) In the PBO (Process Before Output) module set the default tab. This will depend on the tab selected by the user. This is why we maintain the Function Code.
How this is done is by setting the field ACTIVETAB of the tabstrip control to the Function code selected by the user.
4) In the PBO (Process Before Output) we call the Subscreen including the current screen number and program name.
5) In the PAI (Process After Input) event we need to also declare the tabstrip control.
That’s it’s. You should now have a working selection screen with multiple tabs.
Have fun.
