Working With SAP Database Tables And Other Data Types

Database Tables

Database tables are the main structures you will work with in SAP. As such, the system offers you all the tools you may need when you build your table. As I said in one of the previous reviews the interface is very understandable, but when it comes to modifying a table, there are some procedures you should do. However, the eight module in the course perfectly explains the steps you have to perform when you modify your table.

It’s really good there are detailed explanations of the particularities when working with key fields – adding, modifying, and deleting such ones. It’s an important thing because when we edit a key filed we could end up with our table messed out. That’s why there are interpretations of the main scenarios and results of performing one of the mentioned operations.

I personally liked the foreign key management abilities of the SAP system. Not that I’m so experienced in database modelling, but in comparison to some other software that I’ve worked with, SAP really takes one of the first places. Another thing which impressed me was the Database Utility which prevents you do some steps with dangerous consequences – really handy for newbies like me.

Working with other data types (date and time)

Everyone who has sometime worked with a low-level programming language (C for example) and has tried to implement a function to do some operations with date and time will know how annoying these calculations and data validations are. Luckily, ABAP has the D (date) and T (time) data types. They enable us to do date and time calculations straightforward without bothering with the number validity or the correctness of the format. You just have to comply with the ABAP date and time format:

YYYYMMDDfor date

HHMMSSfor time

This is it – as simple as possible. You will agree with me when you take a look at the excellent examples in the course module.

The system variables for system date (sy-datum) and system time (sy-uzeit) are also useful in many ways. I accidently found some other date and time system variables in ABAP which could also be of help:

System field Content
sy-datlo Date in the current user’s time zone.
sy-datum Local date of the ABAP system.
sy-dayst Indicator for summer time. During summer time, “X”, otherwise ” “.
sy-fdayw Factory calendar weekday. “1” for Monday, …, “5” for Friday.
sy-timlo Time in the current user’s time zone.
sy-tzone Time difference from the UTC reference time in seconds, ignoring summer
time.
sy-uzeit Local time of the ABAP system.
sy-zonlo User’s time zone.

This is a guest article is by Plamen Velkov, who is taking my Beginners Guide To SAP ABAP programming course. This is part 5 of his course review / journey.

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About the Author:

Pete has been working with SAP technologies for over 10 years. He started out as an ABAP consultant and then moved on to BW where he has worked many different clients covering a wide variety of industries. "I love introducing SAP technology (especially BI) to new clients and showing them how they can go from zero to hero within their business in super fast time". Contact me on twitter @PeterMoxon