Hi Subba,
I think, you had posted this earlier also and did not attract responses.
Perhaps the answer widely varies from application to application.
I'll try to answer from my specific experience.
At implementation stage (as of yours) we had these templates (xls) for uploading
Functional Location Master
Equipment Master Master
Bills of Material
Maintenance Work Centers
Characteristics
Equipment Classes
General Maintenance Tasklists
Maintenance Plans
Measuring Points
These are all templates as per the BDC program developments, developed by ABAPers.
These can be also uploaded through LSMW, few os them without complications.
As time passed, we had to develop upload programs as per customer need such as:
History Notifications uploading
History Measuring Documents uploading etc.
For all of the above, available data will be arranged in the respective excel templates and the programs are executed.
As far as CATALOGS & CODES is concerned:
Though huge database was uploaded, we never thought of upload programs for this.
This is a Customization area, Requests are generated and transported.
Everything was done manually.
(First by arranging suitably in Excel sheets and then copying 25 lines at a time to QS41 screens, and so on.)
So we had a template here for this purpose.
First decide Code Groups, Codes and Descriptions in excel template and copy in batches of multiple lines into QS41.
Then post-implementation, mass changes in Masterdata is always handled by LSMW.
So years after implementation a practice emerged in my situation. i.e.,
If it is Masterdata Creation we use the available BDC programs
and if its
Masterdata Modification we use LSMW.
Perhaps this is all, from my side
Jogeswara Rao K