What results in faster access to internal tables?

The choice that leads to faster access to internal tables, particularly in the context of ABAP programming, is selecting a sorted internal table and specifying the primary key partially from the left without gaps.

Sorted internal tables are organized in a specific order defined by their key fields, which allows for efficient searching. When you partially specify the primary key from the left, it narrows down the search space significantly. The ABAP runtime can locate the first relevant entry quickly, using a binary search method thanks to the sorted nature. This means that if you are looking for a range of data defined by the leftmost key fields, the system can skip irrelevant entries, significantly speeding up data retrieval.

To further clarify, specifying a primary key completely in a sorted internal table could also yield fast access, but the aspect of partially defining it is crucial here, which facilitates quicker access to a subset of data. Other types of internal tables might have different characteristics. For instance, while hashed tables are designed for rapid access using a complete key, they do not support sorting or range-based access effectively. Therefore, the performance context will depend on how the internal table type and its key fields are used.