Symptom
You have replicated Materials from an external system to C4C. You noticed there are leading zeros in field External ID of materials although you are not sending them in replication.
Example: External ID = 000000000123456.
Reproducing the Issue
- Go to Products and select Product Administration
- Select any Material replicated from an external system
- The External ID has leading zeros.
Cause
The reason for that is because the External ID accepts different format rules, i.e. only numbers or a combination of numbers, letters and special characters.
For pure numerical External IDs, the alpha-numeric conversion takes place. Alpha-numeric conversion means that numerical values are padded with leading zeros until they reach the length of the referenced data type.
For External IDs containing letters or special characters, the alpha-numeric conversion is not needed and hence no leading zeros will be inserted in ID. For example: External ID = ABC-123 (contains letters or special characters).
Resolution
This is the designed system behavior.
Keywords
External ID, Leading Zero, Replication, Products, Materials , KBA , LO-MD-MM , Material Master , How To