The SAP Table View control is a Windows ActiveX OLE control that may be used in various scenarios. It is up to the user of the control to define the appearance and data stored in the control. This is either done interactively in design mode (see Design Environment Property Pages), or at runtime through OLE Automation calls.

For this purpose, the object hierarchy of the Table View control is separated into columns, rows, and cells. This separation makes access to data and properties of the control easier. Different fonts may be assigned to each object. Different formatting is available for each column. Each column can also be combined with one of several data types. The user interface is changed according to these data types. For example, Boolean values are displayed as checkboxes and selection data types as drop-down combo boxes. Drag-and-drop clipboard operations are supported in a standard text-format-based implementation. Nevertheless, these operations may also be adapted easily to the application’s needs.

Last but not least, the SAP Table View control can become an R/3-aware control through connection to the Views collection of a SAP Table object. This results in an highly automated procedure for the display and navigation of table data obtained from an R/3 System or any other data source.