Display 500+ character field from SAP transparent table

Question

As it commonly known, it is not recommended by SAP to use 255+ character fields in transparent tables. One should use several 255 fields instead, wrap text in LCHR, LRAW or STRING, or use SO10 text etc.

However, while maintaining legacy (and ugly) developments, such problem often arises: how to view what is stored in char500 or char1000 field in database? The real life scenario:

1. we have a development where some structure written and read from char1000 field in transparent table
2. we know field structure and parsing the field through CL_ABAP_CONTAINER_UTILITIES=>FILL_CONTAINER_C or SO_STRUCT_TO_CHAR goes fine, all fields are put wonderfully
3. displaying the fields via SE11/SE16/SE16n gives nothing as the field is truncated to 255, and to 132 in debugger, AFAIR.

Is there any standard tool, transaction or FM we can use to display such long field?

Answer 1

In the DBA cockpit (ST04), there is a SQL command line, where you can enter directly the "native" SQL commands and display the result as an ALV view. With a substring function, you can split a field into several sections (expl: select substr(sql_text,1,100) s1, substr(sql_text,101,100) s2, substr(sql_text,201,100) s3, substr(sql_text,301,100) s4 from dba_hist_sqltext where sql_id = '0cuyjatkcmjf0'). PS: every ALV cell is 128 characters maximum.

Not sure whether this tool is available for all supported database softwares.

There is also an equivalent program named RSDU_EXEC_SQL (in all ABAP-based systems?)

Unfortunately, they won't work for ersatz of tables by SAP (clustered tables and so on) as they can be queried only with ABAP "Open SQL".