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Review of Concepts: Work Areas & Internal Tables

Review of Concepts: Work Areas & Dec-2008 IBM Corporation 2013

Internal Tables | 4.06
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Objectives

The participants will be able to:

Recall the concept of work area.
Recall the concept of Internal tables.

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Review of Concepts : Table Work Areas

The ABAP TABLES statement LFA1 WORK AREA

creates a work area for each of the
tables mentioned.

BSIK WORK AREA

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Review of Concepts : Retrieving Data from Database Into

Table Work Area

CHECK
SELECT * SY-SUBRC

The ABAP SELECTENDSELECT

statement takes data from the specified
table (data source) and places it, one
record at a time, into the work area.

DATA
SOURCE
RECORD # 1

LFA1 WORK AREA

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Review of Concepts : Replacement of Table Work Area

Contents

CHECK
SELECT * SY-SUBRC

DATA
SOURCE

RECORD # 2

RECORD # 1
No Longer Available LFA1 WORK AREA

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Review of Concepts : Using Internal Tables to Capture

Incoming Data

DATA
INTERNAL TABLE SOURCE

RECORD # 1 RECORD # 6

RECORD # 2
LFA1 WORK AREA
RECORD # 3

RECORD # 4 When an ABAP programmer

creates an internal table the
RECORD # 5 data is not lost. It remains
available to the
programmer.

APPEND ITAB

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Review of Concepts : Keywords in Emptying Work Areas

BEFORE AFTER

RECORD # 3
CLEAR LFA1.

LFA1 WORK AREA LFA1 WORK AREA

INTERNAL TABLE INTERNAL TABLE

RECORD # 1
REFRESH ITAB.
RECORD # 2

RECORD # 3

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Demonstration

Using Workareas and Internal tables.

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Practice

Using Workareas and Internal tables.

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Summary

TABLES statement in ABAP creates a workarea for the database table specified.
Workareas can hold only one record during the program execution whereas, an
Internal table can hold multiple records at a time.
For the above reason, when we have to retrieve multiple entries from the
database, we should be using internal tables instead of an workarea. Because
use of workarea will mean we have get the data from database multiple times.
CLEAR statement deletes the content of workarea. It can be used to initialize the
header line of an internal table as well.
REFRESH statement wipes off the contents of the internal table.

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Questions

What is the difference between a workarea and an internal table ?

Which of these (workarea vs. Internal table) is better to use in our program when
we need to retrieve multiple records ?
What are the statements to initialize workareas and internal tables ?

11 Review of Concepts: Work Areas & Internal Tables | 4.06 Dec-2008 IBM Corporation 2013