Attributes, Fields, and Columns

Attributes

In the context of your application you have generated a context node and added the attributes that you require to display an internal data table.  You have mapped this context node (for example, by means of external context mapping) to the Data context node of the ALV interface controller.

Field

If you use the ALV configuration model, all the field objects are generated automatically from the specifications you made for the attributes in the context node. As a result, every attribute in the context node has a representative with the same name in the ALV configuration model.

By connecting the internal data table to the context node you fulfill all the prerequisites to start your application with ALV. You can sort the data with statements from your application, filter it, or perform applications. All these functions (ALV services) are essentially field object methods. You cannot, however, display the data yet. To do this, you need columns.

Columns

The column objects are visible elements that define the ALV output. The columns have the same names as the corresponding field objects and attributes in context node. If you want to display the values of the field, you can delete the corresponding column object. You can also display the values of a field in as many columns as you want and in several different ways.