ARTICLE
Data Types and Data Objects
This section describes the declaration of data types and data objects.
Data Types
Data types are templates for creating data objects. Data types can be
defined independently in the ABAP program or in ABAP Dictionary. As
attributes of a data object, data types can also exist in a
non-independent state. Data types do not use any memory space for work
data, but may require memory for administration information.
Data objects
A data object is an instance of a data type and occupies as much memory
space as its type specifies. An ABAP program only works with data that
is available as content of data objects. Data objects are either created
implicitly as named data objects, or explicitly as
anonymous data objects using
CREATE DATA .
Data types of data objects
Data objects can be declared by reference to a non-generic data type of
the same ABAP program or from ABAP Dictionary. In this case, the data
type determines the complete technical attributes of the data object. A
data object can also be constructed in the ABAP program without
completely specified type definitions. The data type of a data object of
this type is always complete, and does not exist independently, but
rather as an attribute of the data object, and is called a bound data
type.
Note
The data types of all class attributes belong to the static class
properties. A LIKE addition enables you to refer to the visible
class attributes without first creating an object by using the class
component selector or reference variables
Declaration statements
Declaring Data Types
Declaring Data Objects
Documentation extract taken from SAP system, � Copyright SAP AG. All rights reserved