ABAP Keyword Documentation → ABAP − Release-Specific Changes → Changes in Releases 4.0 and 4.5
Time Stamps in Release 4.0
When time stamps were introduced in ABAP in Release 4.0, special attention was paid to the following:
- Making the time stamp meaningful to a user in his or her particular time zone
- Making objects uniquely identifiable by their time stamp by guaranteeing a hight level of precision
You can generate a timestamp in an ABAP program using the new variant GET TIME STAMP FIELD
f. It is always globally unique since it is not stored in local time, but always in
UTC time (Universal Time Coordination, previously Greenwich Mean Time).
You can generate a time stamp with normal precision (to one second), or accurate to around one microsecond (1E-6 seconds).
To convert the time stamp to local time or to ABAP time and date format (data type T or D), use the following variants:
CONVERT TIME STAMP tst INTO [DATE|TIME] ...
and
WRITE tst TIME ZONE tz
.
See also:
Further Information About Time Stamps