Data element

Data element 

Data elements describe individual fields of a table in a database.

The following are the two different kinds of data elements:

• Elementary types
• Reference types  

Elementary types

      Refer to data types that have semantic attributes, such as built-in data type, length, and number of decimal places .

     These data types can be assigned to a data element in either of the following ways:

•     Assigning a predefined ABAP Dictionary type : 

             Specifies that the data element can be assigned with the predefined ABAP Dictionary types, such as CHAR and NUMC.

•     Assigning a domain: 

      Specifies that the data element being created inherits the technical characteristics related to the elementary types from a predefined domain.

Reference types

  Refer to single fields that contain references to global classes and interfaces from the ABAP class library.

   After creating a data element, you can also assign documentation and text information to it.

The documentation of a data element is the description of the data element.The documentation entered for a data element is displayed when the user selects F1 help on fields referring to that data element.

Field Labels:

   Field labels are used to assign text information to data elements. You already know that a field is assigned to a data element.

The following are the two types of field labels:

• Short, medium, and long fields :Refer to keywords used to define the lengths of different fields.
• Header fields : Refer to information displayed above a column. The length of the header field must not exceed the length assigned to the data element.