How to create index in SAP ?

Question

Currently we are interfacing our application with SAP. We are having a lot of performance problems with bapi/rfc approach. So recently we are trying "direct sql" approach to retrieve some data from SAP. Unfortunately, we've found that some of SAP table does not equipped with proper indices for our scenario.

We've tried creating index with SAPGUI, but found that the real "database index" was not actually created. Index created with direct DDL will later cause trouble with SAP transport mechanism.

What is the proper way to create an index in SAP database ?

(We are using SAP R3 on Oracle Database)

Answer 1

The proper way to create index is using the SE11 transaction. It should be done in the development system. And transported to the QA and production systems.

Update to comment:
1. Make sure you have activated the table after the change. Go to the menu item Utilitys=> Versions or somthing like that to make sure your changes were activated.
2. You can use transaction SE14 to force the change ( But I think it's only for troubleshooting).
3. There are other troubleshooting steps that I don't remember. You can search for notes int sdn.sap.com or services.sap.com/notes.