ALE - Middleware

Welcome to the ALE Troubleshooting Guide!

What is middleware, ALE?

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 SAP systems and non-SAP systems as well as between SAP systems.

Data is exchanged between application systems in a controlled manner and consistency is maintained.

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.

The application systems of an ALE integrated system are loosely linked. The data is exchanged asynchronously, ensuring that the data arrives in the recipient system, even if this is not available when the data is sent. Synchronous connections are only used by ALE to read data.

ALE provides administration, development and testing tools.

To use the ALE tools choose Tools → IDoc Interface/ALE.

ALE business processes are part of the standard SAP application system delivery. They are documented in the Library of ALE Business Processes.

For more information about the required system settings see the Implementation Guide (IMG):

Transaction SPRO → SAP Reference IMG → Application Server → IDoc Interface/ALE (or the transaction SALE).

For information on programming see the ALE Programming Guide under http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp2/helpdata/en/78/2173cf51ce11d189570000e829fbbd/frameset.htm.

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

Further informations are available under the links http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp2/helpdata/en/0b/2a60bb507d11d18ee90000e8366fc2/frameset.htm and FAQs for ALE/EDI/IDoc http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-26193