In every Open SQL statement, data is transferred between the application server and the database system. Furthermore, the database system has to construct or reopen the appropriate administration data for each database access. You can therefore minimize the load on the network and the database system by minimizing the number of times you access the database. 
Multiple Operations Instead of Single Operations
When you change data using INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE, use internal tables instead of single entries. If you read data using SELECT, it is worth using multiple operations if you want to process the data more than once, other wise, a simple select loop is more efficient.
Avoid Repeated Access
As a rule you should read a given set of data once only in your program, and using a single access. Avoid accessing the same data more than once (for example, SELECT before an UPDATE).
Avoid Nested SELECT Loops
A simple SELECT loop is a single database access whose result is passed to the ABAP program line by line. Nested SELECT loops mean that the number of accesses in the inner loop is multiplied by the number of accesses in the outer loop. You should therefore only use nested SELECT loops if the selection in the outer loop contains very few lines.
However, using combinations of data from different database tables is more the rule than the exception in the relational data model. You can use the following techniques to avoid nested SELECT statements:
ABAP Dictionary Views
You can define joins between database tables statically and systemwide as views in the ABAP Dictionary. ABAP Dictionary views can be used by all ABAP programs. One of their advantages is that fields that are common to both tables (join fields) are only transferred once from the database to the application server.
Views in the ABAP Dictionary are implemented as inner joins. If the inner table contains no lines that correspond to lines in the outer table, no data is transferred. This is not always the desired result. For example, when you read data from a text table, you want to include lines in the selection even if the corresponding text does not exist in the required language. If you want to include all of the data from the outer table, you can program a left outer join in ABAP.
The links between the tables in the view are created and optimized by the database system. Like database tables, you can buffer views on the application server. The same buffering rules apply to views as to tables. In other words, it is most appropriate for views that you use mostly to read data. This reduces the network load and the amount of physical I/O in the database.
Joins in the FROM Clause
You can read data from more than one database table in a single SELECT statement by using inner or left outer joins in the FROM clause.
The disadvantage of using joins is that redundant data is read from the hierarchically-superior table if there is a 1:N relationship between the outer and inner tables. This can considerably increase the amount of data transferred from the database to the application server. Therefore, when you program a join, you should ensure that the SELECT clause contains a list of only the columns that you really need. Furthermore, joins bypass the table buffer and read directly from the database. For this reason, you should use an ABAP Dictionary view instead of a join if you only want to read the data.
The runtime of a join statement is heavily dependent on the database optimizer, especially when it contains more than two database tables. However, joins are nearly always quicker than using nested SELECT statements.
Subqueries in the WHERE and HAVING Clauses
Another way of accessing more than one database table in the same Open SQL statement is to use subqueries in the WHERE or HAVING clause. The data from a subquery is not transferred to the application server. Instead, it is used to evaluate conditions in the database system. This is a simple and effective way of programming complex database operations.
Using Internal Tables
It is also possible to avoid nested SELECT loops by placing the selection from the outer loop in an internal table and then running the inner selection once only using the FOR ALL ENTRIES addition. This technique stems from the time before joins were allowed in the FROM clause. On the other hand, it does prevent redundant data from being transferred from the database.
Using a Cursor to Read Data
A further method is to decouple the INTO clause from the SELECT statement by opening a cursor using OPEN CURSOR and reading data line by line using FETCH NEXT CURSOR. You must open a new cursor for each nested loop. In this case, you must ensure yourself that the correct lines are read from the database tables in the correct order. This usually requires a foreign key relationship between the database tables, and that they are sorted by the foreign key.
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