ABAP Keyword Documentation →  ABAP Dictionary →  Classic Objects in ABAP Dictionary →  Data Types →  Data Elements 

Technical Attributes of Data Elements

A data element describes an elementary data type or a reference type with the following technical attributes:

• Elementary type

A data element that describes an elementary type has a predefined data type from ABAP Dictionary, a length, and an (optional) number of decimal places as its technical attributes. These technical attributes are defined either directly in the data element or are applied from a domain.

• Reference type

A data element that describes a reference type is either a type for a data reference variable or for an object reference variable.

• The static type for a data reference variable is either the generic type DATA, any data type from ABAP Dictionary (including database tables or views), or a directly specified predefined data type.

• The static type for an object reference variable is either the generic type OBJECT or a global class or global interface from the Class Library.

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54

Note

When existing data elements are modified, all consumers of the data element are also affected. In particular, foreign keys can become inconsistent when used for fields of database tables, which makes conversions necessary.

Example

The data element S_CONN_ID takes its technical attributes (data type NUMC, length 4) from the domain S_CONN_ID. The data element S_CONN_ID has documentation and further texts that describe its semantics. It is used as a data type of many table fields, such as the column CONNID of the database tables SPFLI, SBOOK, and SFLIGHT, that match these semantic attributes.