SAP / SAP Beginner (0 to 2 yrs) Interview questions
What are the types of internal tables in ABAP?
ABAP supports three kinds of internal tables, differing in how rows are organized and accessed, which affects both what operations are efficient and how you'd typically use each one.
| Standard Table | Sorted Table | Hashed Table |
| Rows in insertion order; access by index is fast. | Rows always kept in sorted order by key. | Rows accessed via a hash of the key; no defined order. |
| Good for simple sequential processing. | Good when you need data to stay sorted and search efficiently by key. | Good for very fast single-key lookups on large tables. |
DATA: lt_standard TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF kna1, lt_sorted TYPE SORTED TABLE OF kna1 WITH UNIQUE KEY kunnr, lt_hashed TYPE HASHED TABLE OF kna1 WITH UNIQUE KEY kunnr.
Choosing the right type matters for performance: a standard table's key lookups are effectively a linear scan unless a secondary index is defined, while sorted and hashed tables are built specifically for efficient key-based access at the cost of some overhead maintaining that structure on insert.
Which internal table type is optimized for very fast single-key lookups?
What is a standard table's key lookup performance like without a secondary index?
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