One of the first steps required for putting the SAP Retail System into operation is normally to transfer article data from a legacy system. This is because it is not normally possible to re-create the articles manually since there are so many of them.

If your retail system is a distributed system, it is also necessary to exchange data between these systems. Other scenarios making it necessary to distribute article master data are as follows:

• Transfer of article data from an R/3 system or R/2 system

• Distribution of changed and/or re-created article data between R/3 systems, for example, an information system located on a separate computer

• Supply of legacy systems or non-SAP systems with changed and/or re-created article data

• Supply of data to sites with a separate system, for example, when commissioning a store

• Transfer of data from data pools

• Targeted distribution of articles (manual sending)

In the SAP Retail System, Application Link Enabling (ALE) is used to transfer and distribute data. This technique is the same for all SAP applications and is used in the SAP Retail System to distribute different kinds of master data and transaction data via defined interfaces known as IDocs. For a detailed description of ALE, the functions supported, and how to proceed, see the following SAP library documentation:

The functions offered by the assortment list and point-of-sale interface (outbound) also allow you to distribute article information. However, this information is used only to supply store systems and point-of-sale (POS) systems. It cannot be used to transfer and distribute article master records.