What is Data type in SAP ABAP
ABAP Dictionary is used to define user-defined global data types in SAP, where the user-defined data types are type definitions and can be used in the ABAP program with TYPE clause.
Types of Data types: – The following are different types of data types
- Data elements
- Structure
- Table types
1. Data elements
Data elements are the fields in ABAP Dictionary and are used to identify the types of columns in the database.
Data elements types: – The following are the types of data elements
- Elementary type
- Reference type
Element type: – It has semantic attributes such as text, value tables, length, and number of decimal places. These data types can be specify by using the following methods-
- Assigning predefined ABAP Data type: – It specifies the data elements can be assigned with the predefined dictionary types to a element type i.e CHAR (character) and NUMC (Numeric text) and can assign length to a selected data type.
- Assigning a Domain: – When a domain is created it is mandatory to specify a dictionary data type and character, You can use on domain with any number of data elements.
2. Structure data types: – Structure data type is a grouping of data types in one name. When structure is created in ABAP, each component should have a name and type of data.
Reference Type: – Reference types are predefined in SAP and there are defined by the ABAP programmer.
Predefined data types : – The following are predefined data types in SAP.
| Data Type | Value | Default field length |
| C (Character) | “…” | 1 |
| D (Date) | 8 | “00000000” |
| F (Float) | 8 | 0 |
| I (Integer) | 4 | 0 |
| N (Numeric) | 1 | “0…0” |
| P (Packed) | 8 | 0 |
| T (Time) | 6 | “000000” |
| X (Hexadecimal) | 1 | x’0…0″ |
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