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ABAP Tutorials -
ABAP Data Dictionary
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Written by admin
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Wednesday, 10 September 2008 17:13 |
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The meaning of a field name is not always obvious. For example, KUNNR may not immediately bring the image of a customer to your mind. Data elements help resolve this problem. A data element provides a meaningful description for a field. You will hear it called a semantic domain. The data element description appears beside a field in a table definition. These descriptions are language-dependent (unlike field names).
Even more importantly, the data element provides field headings for use on screens. When you “paint” a dictionary field on a screen, you can automatically have the data element field headings appear. This permits the end user to see meaningful field descriptions. The advantage of using a data element to describe fields and provide field headers is that the data element can be used more than once.
For example, SAP R/3 contains many tables that have the field KUNNR. In cases like this, it is not necessary to enter the description for KUNNR many times. Each instance of KUNNR can be assigned to the same data element, and the field description only needs to be specified once. Additionally, if the description needs to be changed, it must be changed only once, and all fields referring to that data element automatically use the new description.
SAP R/3 comes delivered with many pre-defined data elements. Whenever the semantic description of a field you are creating matches with an existing SAP R/3- supplied data element, use the one that SAP R/3 provides. Otherwise, you must create your own data element.
When using a SAP R/3-supplied data element, however, you must also use the corresponding SAP R/3-supplied domain. If you wish to use a different domain, you must create your own data element.
In addition to providing field descriptions and headers, data elements can provide detailed field documentation. This documentation is maintained at the data element level and is available to a user who hits F1 when the cursor is in a field assigned to the data element.
To maintain this documentation, navigate to the Change Data Element screen within the ABAP Dictionary and click the Documentation push-button.
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ABAP Tutorials 
