ABAP Dictionary explained with Groceries list

In this article we are going to see about ABAP Dictionary. The data is administered centrally in the SAP system using the ABAP Dictionary. The transaction for the ABAP Dictionary is SE11. The following ABAP Dictionary objects are involved in SE11 transaction.

• Domain
• Data Element
• Structure
• Table type
• Database table
• Type groups
• Views
• Search help
• Block Concept

Now the ABAP Dictionary concepts are explained with list of groceries example.

• Create a Domain
• Create a Data Element
• Create Structure
• Create Data Table

I want to manage and administer the groceries list. Therefore I want to create a data table which stores the list of groceries.

Here are the frequently used items in my grocery list.

1. Bread
2. Butter
3. Honey
4. Rice
5. Eggs
6. Chicken
7. Tomato
8. Onion
9. Olive oil
10. Pepper
11. Milk
12. Coffee
13. Plant based milk
14. Tomato Bio
15. Chicken Nuggets

I listed these items in a table and figured out that the names are not unique. For example 7 and 14 are tomato. But they are of different type. Similarly 6 and 15 are of type chicken, 11 and 13 are of type milk. In order to make the items unique, I want to give a unique no to each grocery item. Say I start with 1000,1001,…. So for Bread, Item Id is 1000. Now comes the question , how many packets of Bread do I buy in a week or during a single purchase. The items onion, rice etc. are measured in kilograms. The item such as milk are measured in litre etc.

We have now identified the data in the groceries list. For example,

Item Id –>1000

Name of Item –>Bread

Size of Purchase –>2 Packets

Unit of Purchase –> Packets

Now let’s have a short look at Data types in ABAP Dictionary. The frequently used data types in ABAP are CHAR,NUMC,DEC,INT1,INT2 and INT4.

The figure shows how different data can be defined using different data types.

Domain:

Let us create four different domains.

Item Id => ZDOM_Item_Id=>CHAR (Length=4)

Name of Item=> ZDOM_Item_Name=>CHAR(Length=100)

No.of Items=> ZDOM_No_Items=>Int4

Unit of Purchase=>ZDOM_Unit=>UNIT

Data Element:

The Data Element depicts the column name or the field name. So create four different data elements from the respective domains.

Item Id => ZDE_Item_Id=>ZDO_Item_Id

Name of Item=> ZDE_Item_Name=>ZDO_Item_Name

No.of Items=> ZDE_No_Items=>ZDO_No_Items

Unit of Purchase=>ZDE_Unit_of_Purchase=> ZDO_Unit_of_Purchase

In the field description of the data element give a meaningful name. This text appears in the user interface. The text must also be translated into respective language, if the application is maintained in different languages.

Data Table:

Finally, we arrive to the Data table creation section. The fields are defined in the data table with corresponding data elements.

ZDT_ITEM_LIST

Field Name	Data Elements
Item_Id	ZDE_Item_Id
Name_of_Item	ZDE_Item_Name
No. of Items	ZDE_No_Items
Unit_of_Purchase	ZDE_Unit_of_Purchase

Structure:

The items in the list can be structured using structures in ABAP.

So let’s create a structure

ZST_ITEM_LIST

It is clearly evident, that the structure and Data table may look similar in construction. For Beginners, this will always be a confusion. One of the key difference between Data tables and structures is that a structure will always hold a single line of record. But whereas a Data table will hold a series of records. Below is the pictorial representation.

DATA TABLE

Item Id	Name of Item	No. of Items	Unit of Purchase
1000	Bread	2	Packets
1001	Rice	2	Kg
1002	Onion	1,5	Kg

Structure => 1000, Bread, 2, Packets (Single Line of Record)

Table Type:

A table type can be defined from the structure. In order to achieve that, simply define a line type as the structure

ZTable type_Items => Line Type–>ZST_Item_List

This is how data can be managed and maintained in a data table. ABAP provides a structured way of managing the data in data tables using the Development objects such as Domain, Data Element, Structures and Data tables.

References:

SAP ABAP OBJECTS by Felix Roth