Preface – This post is part of the Differences in ABAP for Interviews series.

Introduction

The most common question of an ABAP Interview is the difference between Data Class and Delivery class of an ABAP Table. In our previous articles, we have discussed both in detail and now we will discuss their differences.

Before jumping to the difference between a Data Class and Delivery class, let’s have a short introduction of the two.

Data Class

A Data Class represents a physical area in the database where all the data of the table assigned to this Data Class are stored.

Data Class in ABAP can be assigned to a table using its Technical Settings. SAP was smart while creating properties for tables. With the help of Data Class, SAP divides and organize the Tables according to their type of Data. It keeps all Master Data together, all Transaction Data together, all User Data together and all Organizational Data together. This increases system performance as well as increases system availability.

Types of Data Class are:

• APPL0 (Master Data): Data which is rarely changed.
• APPL1 (Transactional Data): Data which is changed frequently.
• APPL2 (Organizational Data): Data defined when the system is installed and seldom
• USER and USER1 are provided for the customer.

As Data Class determines the type of data the table contains, the Delivery class determines the behaviour of the table.

Delivery Class

A delivery class defines:

• Transport control of Data within Landscapes and customer systems
• Transport control of Data for an installation and upgrade
• Transport control of Data of client copy
• If data can be maintained in Extended Table Maintenance [SM30] using TMG or not.

In short, we can say a delivery class determines whether data of the table can be maintained & transported or not.

Types of Delivery Class are:

• A: Application table (master and transaction data).
• C: Customer table, data maintained by the customer only.
• L: Table for storing temporary data

Difference between Data Class and Delivery class

Now, let’s have a look at their difference.