Dear Jean Denis
I am not sure about your topic.
We have a customer-specific program that needs to determine if a specification has change and if it needs to be resent to an external system.
This customer-specific program is not leveraging IDoc or ALE. => why can you not use ALE etc. technique?
Honestly my experience in using "inheritance" is quite old (n other words, if all the pointers are already set between the 2 specifications further change to source specification doesn’t actually change target specification.)
As well I am not sure about how the system would react if you would use "reference". That means; if e.g. REAL_GRP is changed I believe the relevant REAL_SUBis not getting any kind of update; I am sorry to say; this is a "very" special question
In context of: Aside from the last modification time, is there another approach that could indicate that a specification has change, something like a revision number ? => there is nothing more existing as the topics you have mentioned according to my knowledge.
In contetx of:
For example, changing an existing value that is pass on to a specification via inheritance won’t immediately trigger a change in table CDHDR for the target specification.
We need to define "exactly" the term" existing" value. Inheritance is done using some "RECNROOT" links; if e.g. value of "flash point" is updated, there is no need to update this link; only if you would add on source level a further value record you would create new "links". But as mentioned. my experience using INheirtance is quite old
By the way. with EHP3 the "inheritance" has been optimized. I am not sure if you need to activate somebusiness function; but some improvement has been done
I did not check content of OSS: but I would assume that you are "right"; by using table TCGTPLREL you may have the need to detect; is there a "source" specification changed and then initiate relevant subactivities.
I will read cross the OSS notes. The "crucial" topic here is: if on the target spec by using inheritance nothintg is "change" (no change pointer generated) the data on target specificaiotn will not be transmitted via ALE to a target system
C.B.