Internal Table in SAP ABAP

Internal Table:

In real time different modules e.g. MM , FI , CO , SD etc. hits the database to update the values so that they want to see the values in particular way such as for SD – Sales related details, for FI – Financial related details etc. that may change the database value.



So, instead of hitting the database and changing the values at the database level SAP come up with a concept known as internal table.

Internal table is a variable which is used to extract the records from the database table and process the records. Internal table is like temporary table.

So, now different departments can make a copy of the database table , process them according to their requirements by using internal table without changing the database table.

Properties of internal table:

1. The data that is copied from database table is copied record by record and in the same sequence. So accessing data from internal table will also be done record by record and in the same sequence.

2. Internal table is a collection of group of structures and structure is a group of fields.

3. Internal table stores the records, manipulate and format the records according to user requirement.

4. Memory allocation of internal table is done at runtime as internal tables can store any number of records (may be 1 million or 1 billion).

5. The line type of an internal table can be any ABAP data types – elementary, structured or internal tables.

Steps to declare internal table:

1.Declare the structure of the internal table.

TYPES : BEGIN OF ty_mara_t,
         matnr TYPE mtart,
         maktx TYPE maktx,
         matkl TYPE matkl,
        END OF   ty_mara_t.

DATA : BEGIN OF ls_mara_d,
         matnr TYPE mtart,
         maktx TYPE maktx,
         matkl TYPE matkl,
      END OF    ls_mara_d.

DATA : ls_mara_3 TYPE ty_mara_t.

DATA : ls_mara_4 LIKE ls_mara_d.

Types – it is used to define user defined data types.

Data   - it is used to defined user defined data objects. 

2.Declare internal table using the structure.

DATA : lt_mara_1 TYPE TABLE OF ty_mara_t,
       lt_mara_2 LIKE TABLE OF ls_mara_d,
       lt_mara_3 LIKE TABLE OF ls_mara_3,
       lt_mara_4 LIKE TABLE OF ls_mara_4.

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