ALE. What is ALE?

ALE is Application Linking and Enabling. ALE is a mechanism for the exchange of business data between loosely-coupled r/3 applications built by customers of SAP, the enterprise resource management program. ALE provides SAP customers with a program distribution model and technology that enables them to interconnect programs across various platforms and systems.

There are three layers in the ALE system:

1. Application services.

2. Distribution services.

3.Communication services.

IDoc (intermediate document), which is a container for the application data to be transmitted. After a user performs an SAP transaction, one or more IDocs are generated in the sending database and passed to the ALE communication layer. The communication layer performs a Remote Function Call (RFC), using the port definition and RFC destination specified by the customer model.