ABAP Keyword Documentation → ABAP Glossary
null value
Initial value of an empty column in a row of a database table. Null values can be processing using
Native SQL statements, but they have no equivalent as the content of
data objects in ABAP. Only
the WHERE
addition enables a special condition IS NULL for null values. Changing
Open SQLstatements
(INSERT,
UPDATE, MODIFY) generally do not create null values, provided that you are not processing a
view that does not comprise all columns of a database table. However, depending on the
database system, you can also display empty
strings as null values. Null
values can still arise in database tables if the new columns are appended to filled tables. When reading
with the Open SQL statement SELECT, null values can be created by
aggregate functions or an outer
join, but they are converted to
initial values of the correct type when passed to data objects.