*New to ABAP: what is Report*

Question

Hi Gurus,
i am new to ABAP.If any body can explain about what is report and how many types are there to create internal tables.
points will be reward.
Thanks,
Balakrishna.

Answer 1

hi naidu,
When you are working in the SAP System, you may want to access information from the database. To do this, you use reports.
In this documentation, report refers to the report program, and list refers to the output u2013 that is, the results of the report.
Some reports display information; others allow you to perform analyses.
A report must be started, or executed. In many cases, the SAP System automatically executes a report. Sometimes, however, you will want to execute a report yourself.
In addition to report programs, the SAP System provides numerous reporting tools, each of which has its own set of procedures for executing report programs.
This documentation describes report programs only. For an introduction to the SAP reporting tools, refer to the Reporting Made Easy guidebooks (Release 4.0B). You can find these guidebooks at: www.saplabs.com/rme
In ABAP, there are a total of 7 types of reports. They are:
Classical
Interactive
Logical Database
ABAP query
ALV Reports (ALV stands for ABAP List Viewer)
Report Writer/Report Painter Views (There are different types of views also)
[Edit section] Classical Reports
These are the most simple reports. Programmers learn this one first. It is just an output of data using the Write statement inside a loop.
Classical reports are normal reports. These reports are not having any sub reports. IT IS HAVING ONLY ONE SCREEN/LIST FOR OUTPUT.
Events In Classical Reports.
INTIALIZATION: This event triggers before selection screen display.
AT-SELECTION-SCREEN: This event triggers after proccesing user input still selection screen is in active mode.
START OF SELECTION: Start of selection screen triggers after proceesing selection screen.
END-OF-SELECTION : It is for Logical Database Reporting.
[Edit section] Interactive Reports
As the name suggests, the user can Interact with the report. We can have a drill down into the report data. For example, Column one of the report displays the material numbers, and the user feels that he needs some more specific data about the vendor for that material, he can HIDE that data under those material numbers.
And when the user clicks the material number, another report (actually sub report/secondary list) which displays the vendor details will be displayed.
We can have a basic list (number starts from 0) and 20 secondary lists (1 to 21).
Events associated with Interactive Reports are:
AT LINE-SELECTION
AT USER-COMMAND
AT PF<key>
TOP-OF-PAGE DURING LINE-SELECTION.
HIDE statement holds the data to be displayed in the secondary list.
sy-lisel : contains data of the selected line.
sy-lsind : contains the level of report (from 0 to 21)
Interactive Report Events:
AT LINE-SELECTION : This Event triggers when we double click a line on the list, when the event is triggered a new sublist is going to be generated. Under this event what ever the statements that are been return will be displayed on newly generated sublist.
AT PFn: For predefined function keys...
AT USER-COMMAND : It provides user functions keys.
TOP-OF-PAGE DURING LINE-SELECTION :top of page event for secondary list.
[Edit section] Logical Database Reports
Logical database is another tool for ABAP reports. Using LDB we can provide extra features for ABAP reports.
While using LDB there is no need for us to declare Parameters.
Selection-screen as they will be generated automatically.
We have to use the statement NODES in ABAP report.
If there are many tables the Performance will be slow as all the table data will be read from top node to bottom node .
[Edit section] ABAP Query Reports
ABAP query is another tool for ABAP. It provides efficency for ABAP reports. These reports are very accurate.
Transaction Code : SQ01
   The advantage with ABAP QUERY is logic required for classic & interactive reports system design automatically 80%.
For ABAP QUERY handle these
SQ01 ; QUERY
SQ02 : INFOSET OR FUNCTIONAL AREA
SQ03: USER GROUP.
[Edit section] Report Writer
Key Concept :
Super users and end users can use Report Painter/Report Writer tools to write their own reports.
Giving them the ability to report on additional fields at their discretion shifts the report maintenance burden to them, saving SAP support groups time and effort normally spent creating and maintaining the reports.
Instead of using ABAP code to write a report in FI and CO, many users build a Report Painter/ Report Writer library using transaction MC27.
However, this workaround has some drawbacks. Little known transaction GRCT solves these problems in most cases, and eliminates the need to use transaction MC27.
ABAP Report Types
ABAP report types are those ones available in some report's attributes screen, i.e. :
Executable program
Function group (containing function modules)
Include
Interface pool
Class pool
Module pool
Subroutine pool
Also ALV means ABAP List Viewer. Most convenient way to use it is through reuse library (cf. transaction se83) available from release 4.6 of SAP R/3.
ALV is available in two modes: list and grid. List mode is good old list processing with standard functionnalities, and grid mode is using a new OCX object displaying grids.
hope its clear to you,
Reward points if usefull,
Thanks,
Kalyan.