What is Data Type?
Generally, several types of data available in the external world.
Any language can’t able to differentiate the data directly until the type was specified to the operating system.
Every language has its own predefined data types to categorise and process the data.
Like other languages, ABAP also has its predefined data types to differentiate and process each type separately.
Data type is used to describe the technical characteristics the data.
The data type is declared in the program using variables.
A variable is a name that points to reserved memory location to save the data value.
Based on the data type specified during the variable declaration, operating system allocates the memory and decide how the data can be stored in the memory.
Data type classification?
Data types are classified into three categories in ABAP. Those are –
| Data Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Elementary types | Elementary types are the smallest individual units of types. Elementary type is a single data type used to define the data. In elementary type, only one data type is used to declare a variable for the data. |
| Complex types | Complex data types are created with the combination of elementary types. ABAP supports complex data types. Complex types allow us to manage and process conceptually-related data under a single name. Complex types can be processed as a whole or individually. |
| Reference types | Reference types specifies data objects that contains references/pointers to other objects. There are no predefined references. We must define them in a program. |
Below tree representation specifies the detailed data types classification.
