Indexes - Form and Use

Purposed of Indexes - to speed up selection from the database. Consist of a sorted copy of certain database table fields.

The primary index is always created automatically in the SAP System. It consists of the primary key fields of the database table, and there is at most one record in the table matching each possible combination of these fields. This kind of index is called a UNIQUE index.

If you cannot use the primary index to determine a selection result (for example, WHERE condition may not contain any primary index fields), the system searches the whole table. To prevent this, and determine the selection result by searching through a restricted number of database records, you can create a secondary index.

Creating an index

You can create an index in Transaction SE11 by choosing Change → Indexes... → Create. To make the index unique, select UNIQUE. To specify the fields that will comprise the index, choose "Choose fields". You then need to save and activate the index.