ALE Integration Technology (SAP Library - ALE Introduction and Administration)

ALE Integration Technology

Purpose

The integration technology Application Link Enabling (ALE) is an important middleware tool in SAP's Business Framework Architecture (BFA). BFA is a component-based architecture enabling software components from SAP and from other software vendors to communicate and be integrated with each other.

ALE can integrate business processes between R/3 Systems and non-R/3 systems as well as between R/3 Systems.

Data is exchanged between applications and remains consistent in all applications.

Example

Company-wide applications such as accounting, human resource management and sales planning may be carried out in the company’s headquarters, whereas production and materials management may be carried out in decentralized plants.

Application systems are loosely coupled in an ALE integrated system. Data is exchanged asynchronously, whereby the data arrives in the receiver system, even if the receiver system cannot be connected to at the time the data is sent. ALE uses synchronous communication for reading data only.

ALE provides administration, development and testing tools.

To use the ALE tools choose Tools ® ALE.

ALE business processes are part of the standard R/3 delivery. They are documented in the Library of ALE Business Processes.

For more information about the required system settings see the R/3 Implementation Guide.

Tools ® AcceleratedSAP ® Customizing ® Project Management

SAP Reference IMG

Basis ® Application Link Enabling (ALE).

For information on programming see the ALE Programming Guide.

To make it easier to assign ALE functions to specific user types, the following user roles have been defined:

ALE Administration SAP_BC_MID_ALE_ADMIN

ALE Development SAP_BC_MID_ALE_DEVELOPER

Logistics - Master Data Distribution SAP_BC_MID_ALE_MD_LO

Accounting - Master Data Distribution SAP_BC_MID_ALE_MD_FI

Human Resources - Master Data Distribution SAP_BC_MID_ALE_MD_HR

Implementation Considerations

Decentralized business applications ensuring data consistency are used because:

The increasing globalization of markets has led to the physical division of organizational units.
Business processes are not restricted to one organization only and more and more customers and vendors are becoming involved.
R/3 System performance can be improved by distributing the business applications.

Features

ALE supports the configuration and operation of distributed applications. ALE controls Messaging across loosely coupled R/3 Systems, ensuring that data is always consistent.

Applications are integrated using a local database rather than a central one. There is no data retention. ALE guarantees the distribution and synchronization of master data, Customizing data and transaction data through asynchronous communication.

Synchronous communication is used in ALE to read data only.

ALE has many benefits:

Application data can be distributed between different releases of R/3 Systems

Data can continue to be exchanged after a release upgrade without requiring special maintenance

Customers can add their own enhancements

Communication interfaces enable connections to non-SAP systems.

R/3 and R/2 Systems can communicate with each other.

ALE has functions for monitoring messages flows and handling communication problems.