Difference between the Field Group and Internal Table.

[Former Member]

Hi all,

Can anybody tell me the difference between the Field group and Internal table and when they will used?

Thanks,

Sriram.

[Former Member]

Hi all,

Can anybody tell me the difference between the Field group and Internal table and when they will used?

Thanks,

Sriram.

[RichHeilman]

More light reading.....

Internal Tables.

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/helpdata/EN/fc/eb35de358411d1829f0000e829fbfe/frameset.htm

Personally, I have never used a "Field-Group", so I can not really offer anything but documentation.

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[Former Member]

Hi Sriram;

The difference is mostly in how they are populated and referenced. Field groups are better for performance and not short-dumping with large amounts of data ( > 10,000 records). Check out this link that shows how to use the field groups:

http://www.sapfans.com/sapfans/forum/r2all/messages/42.html

Cheers,

John

[Former Member]

Hi

Internal Tables: They are used to store record type data in tabular form temporarily in ABAP programming. Or we can say, it stores multiple lines of records for temporary use in ABAP programming.

A field group is a user-defined grouping of characteristics and basic key figures from the EC-EIS or EC-BP field catalog.

Use

The field catalog contains the fields that are used in the aspects. As the number of fields grows, the field catalog becomes very large and unclear. To simplify maintenance of the aspects, you can group fields in a field group. You can group the fields as you wish, for example, by subject area or responsibility area. A field may be included in several field groups.

When maintaining the data structure of an aspect, you can select the field group that contains the relevant characteristics and basic key figures. This way you limit the number of fields offered.

Regards

Ashish

[Former Member]

Hi Sriram,

An internal table is a simple collection of records. No hierarchy is present here.

In a field group, you can have a header record adn then all items under it... this is done basically for grouping.

Field group is not commonly used in abap.

Hope this helps.

Remember 2 reward points, if this answer was very helpful.

Rgds,

Prabhu.

[Former Member]

data of internal table are stored in main memory

while in field groups it is stored not stored in main memory but in temporary memory

so data retrival is faster for field groups

Large extract datasets are not stored in main memory. Instead, they are kept in an external auxiliary file. You can set the directory in which this file is created using the SAP profile parameter DIR_EXTRACT. The default directory is the SAP data directory (SAP profile parameter DIR_DATA).

You cannot nest loops on extracted datasets (unlike internal tables), i.e. only one loop on an extracted dataset can be active at any time. However, several consecutive loops are allowed.

[jayanthi_jayaraman]

Hi,

Basic difference.

In internal table,records will be of same type for a particular table.i.e., no. and name of the fields are same for all the records in the internal table.But in field groups,each record can have different fields.