Secondary Indexes

by Suresh Kumar Parvathaneni

Consider the following example:
SELECT * FROM SPFLI
  %_HINTS ORACLE 'INDEX("SPFLI" "SPFLI~001")'
.......
ENDSELECT.

In the above example, 001 is the secondary index of the table SPFLI. It's a well-known fact that the efficient way of retrieving data from the database tables is by using secondary indexes. Many database vendors provide the optimizer hints for the same. From SAP® v4.5, optimizer hints can be provided by the %_HINTS parameter. This is dependent on the database systems that support optimizer hints. The point to be noted here is these optimizer hints are not standardized by the SQL standards. Each database vendor is free to provide the optimizer hints.
Now to know which index to use for our table:
1. Go to SE11 and there specify the table name
2. Now from the menu, goto --> indexes
3. select the required index.

Now suppose that the identifier 001 represents a non-unique secondary index comprising of the columns CITYFROM and CITYTO. The index name should be defined as:

 <tablename>~<Index Identifier>
like SPFLI~001 in the above example.

The sequence of fields in the WHERE condition is of no relevance in using this optimizers index. If you specify hints incorrectly, ABAP^TM ignores them but doesn't return a syntax error or runtime error.
The code was written in R/3 4.6C.

Code

Consider the following example:

REPORT Suresh_test.

TABLES: spfli.

DATA : t_spfli LIKE spfli OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.

SELECT * FROM spfli
  INTO TABLE t_spfli
  %_HINTS ORACLE 'INDEX("SPFLI" "SPFLI~001")'.

LOOP AT t_spfli.
  WRITE :/ t_spfli.
ENDLOOP.