What is Data Abstraction?

Data abstraction is a process of representing the essential 
features without including implementation details.

In computer programming, abstraction can apply to control or to data: Control abstraction is the abstraction of actions while data abstraction is that of data structures.

Lets take a person as example and see how that person is abstracted in various situations

      A doctor sees (abstracts) the person as patient.  The doctor is interested in name, height, weight, age, blood group,  previous or existing diseases etc of a person.

     An employer sees (abstracts) a person as Employee. The employer is interested in name, age,  health, degree of study, work experience etc of a person.

In the above example, the doctor may not be interested in characteristics of a person on which the employer is interested in and vice versa. 

Both employer and doctor will not be interested in all the characteristics of a person (like the color of dress the person wears on a particular day, the food the person takes, the relatives of the person etc).  But however some elements are common to both doctor and the employer (like name, age, height etc).