Deep and dynamic data objects are another outstanding feature of ABAP. What would we do without internal tables? With internal tables in combination with strings and reference variables you benefit from the fact that you can handle large amounts of complex data structures via a rather simple API. The API, of course, simply consists of the well known internal table statements. When working with internal tables and strings, you normally do not care about their internal representation. You address them as normal data objects and let ABAP do all the dirty work for you. But since nothing is for free, there must be something you have to pay for all that luxury. In the case of internal tables, the price can be their memory consumption. Normally, you even must not care about this. But if memory is an issue, it might be interesting for you how such dynamic data objects are organized, in order to make the right design decisions.

Posted by Dablu in SAP Development