Need help on how to code this SQL statement! (one key has leading zeros)

Question

Good day, everyone!
First of all, I apologize if this isn't the best forum.  I thought of putting it in the SAP Oracle database forum, but the messages there seemed to be geared outside of ABAP SELECTs and programming.  Here's my question:
I would like to join the tables FMIFIIT and AUFK.  The INNER JOIN will be done between FMIFIIT's MEASURE (Funded Program) field, which is char(24), and AUFK's AUFNR (Order Number) field, which is char(12).
The problem I'm having is this:  All of the values in AUFNR are preceeded by two zeros.  For example, if I have a MEASURE value of '5200000017', the corresponding value in AUFNR is '005200000017'.  Because I have my SQL statement coded to just match the two fields, I obviously get no records returned because, I assume, of those leading zeros.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of experience coding SQL, so I'm not sure how to resolve this.
Please help!  As always, I will award points to ALL helpful responses!
Thanks!!
Dave

Answer 1

>
Dave Packard wrote:
> Good day, everyone!
> I would like to join the tables FMIFIIT and AUFK.  The INNER JOIN will be done between FMIFIIT's MEASURE (Funded Program) field, which is char(24), and AUFK's AUFNR (Order Number) field, which is char(12).
>
> The problem I'm having is this:  All of the values in AUFNR are preceeded by two zeros.  For example, if I have a MEASURE value of '5200000017', the corresponding value in AUFNR is '005200000017'.  Because I have my SQL statement coded to just match the two fields, I obviously get no records returned because, I assume, of those leading zeros.
> Dave
You can't do a join like this in SAP's open SQL.  You could do it in real SQL ie EXEC.... ENDEXEC by using SUSBTR to strip off the leading zeros from AUFNR but this would not be a good idea because a)  modifying a column in the WHERE clause will stop any index on that column being used and b) using real SQL rather than open SQL is really not something that should be encouraged for database portability reasons etc. 
Forget about a database join and do it in two stages; get your AUFK data into an itab, strip off the leading zeros, and then use FAE to get the FMIFIIT data (or do it the other way round). 
I do hope you've got an index on your FMIFIIT MEASURE field (we don't have one here); otherwise your SELECT could be slow if the table holds a lot of data.