This section shows how to use the ReadTable class.
A recurrent task when working with SAP and .NET applications is to read directly from tables of the SAP system. The ReadTable class enables access to that data.

Reading Data From Tables #

The following sample shows how to use the ReadTable class to select data from the SAP table MAKT and how to process the ADO.NET result table object.

  • This sample reads the material description texts of the table MAKT. For this the columns MATNR (material number) and MAKTX (material text) are needed.
  • To make sure only the English language texts are read, add a corresponding WHERE statement SPRAS='EN'(SPRAS is the column that contains the language keys).
static void Main(string[] args) 
{ 
    using (R3Connection con = new R3Connection("SAPServer", 00, "SAPUser", "Password", "EN", "800"))
            {
                ERPConnect.LIC.SetLic("LicenseNumber");
                con.Open(false);
				
                ReadTable table = new ReadTable(con);
                table.AddField("MATNR");
                table.AddField("MAKTX");
                table.WhereClause = "SPRAS = 'EN' AND MATNR LIKE '%23'";
                table.TableName = "MAKT";
                table.RowCount = 10;
				
                table.Run();
				
                DataTable resulttable = table.Result;
                for (int i = 0; i < resulttable.Rows.Count; i++)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(
                     resulttable.Rows[i]["MATNR"].ToString() + " " +
                     resulttable.Rows[i]["MAKTX"].ToString());
                }
                Console.ReadLine();
            }
}

The screenshot below shows the output of the sample program.

ReadTable-Console

Table Restrictions #

When extracting tables from older SAP releases you may encounter several restrictions when using the SAP standard function module (RFC_READ_TABLE):

  • The overall length of all columns to be extracted must not exceed 512 bytes.
  • It is not possible to extract data from tables that contain one or more columns of the data type f (FLTP, floating point), DEC (decimal, e.g. for percentage) or x (RAW, LRAW).
  • Poor extraction performance with larger tables.

Warning! Error while converting value ‘*.0’ of row 1530, column 3
The SAP standard module RFC_READ_TABLE for table extraction can only extract the ABAP data type DEC to a limited extent. This leads to the mentioned example error during extraction.