Cannot Use an Asterisk To Indicate a Work Area

You cannot declare a *work area as a database table or work area in ABAP Objects.

In ABAP Objects, the following statements cause an error message:

SELECT ... FROM *dbtab INTO ...

INSERT *dbtab.

UPDATE *dbtab.

DELETE *dbtab.

MODIFY *dbtab.

Correct syntax:

DATA wa TYPE dbtab.

SELECT ... FROM dbtab INTO wa.

INSERT dbtab FROM wa.
or
INSERT INTO dbtab VALUES wa.

UPDATE dbtab FROM wa.
or
UPDATE dbtab SET ... .

DELETE dbtab FROM wa.
or
DELETE FROM dbtab WHERE ...

MODIFY dbtab FROM wa.

Cause:

The DATA statement, used to declare appropriately typed work areas, replaced the declaration of *work areas. You can only declare *work areas using the TABLES statement, which is not supported in ABAP Objects. You can only use *work areas in the short forms of Open-SQL statements, which are also not supported.

Overview:

Replacement for Obsolete Statements ABAP Objects