What is ALE/IDOC and why do we need it?

IDOC: Intermediate Document (IDOC) is the exchange format/messages that is

used to exchange business & transactional data with external SAP & Non SAP
Systems. IDOCs acts as a container for the data which is to be shared among
different systems. IDOC are required in the following scenarios
Electronic data exchange (EDI)
Connect other business application systems (e.g. PC applications, external
Workflow tools) by IDOC
Application Link Enabling (ALE)
ALE: Application Link Enabling is a mechanism to connect distributed but
integrated SAP systems. It helps in exchanging business Messages and data
among distributed SAP Systems and non-SAP systems. ALE can be used for
migration and maintenance of master data as well as for exchanging
transactional data. The communication among these distributed SAP systems
could be synchronous or asynchronous. The ALE has three layers
Application Services
Distribution Services
Communication Services

Structure of an IDOC
An IDOC is displayed as a tree structure. And this Tree structure has three types
of records attached to it. Every IDOC has exactly one control record along with
a number of data records and status records. Control record has the details of
sender/receiver and other control information. Data records contain the actual
business data to be exchanged while the status records are attached to IDOC
throughout the process as the IDOC moves from one step to other.

Steps in creating an IDOC.

To create an IDOC following steps have to be performed.
Create Segments using the (TCODE WE31).
o Segments forms the basic building blocks of an IDOC type and are
used to store the actual data. Each segment can have single or
multiple records of data.
Create IDOC type using (TCODE WE30)
o If the IDOC types (basic types) supplied with the standard SAP
System do not meet our requirements, we can define your own
IDOC types. Different type of segments makes an IDOC.
Create or assign Message type (TCODE WE81/WE82)
o A message represents a specific type of document that is
transmitted between two partners Ex. Orders, Order responses,
Invoices etc. For example, MATMAS is a message type for Material
Master, and INVOIC is a message type for an Invoice (Billing
Document). An IDOC type can be associated with many message
types.
Define Logical systems (TCODE SALE)
o The distribution of data between systems makes it necessary to
identify each system as a unique logical system. A logical system is
an application system in which the applications are coordinated to
work in one common database. In SAP terms, a logical system
corresponds to a client.

Maintain RFC Destinations (TCODE SM59)

o Remote Function Call(RFC) is one of the way to connect from an
ABAP system to an external system. We can maintain the
parameters for RFC connections using transaction SM59.

Define Ports (TCODE WE21)

o The port defines the technical characteristics of the connection
between SAP system and the other system with which we want to
transfer the data. The port defines the medium in which data is
exchanged between the 2 systems. There are different types of
ports. The 2 most commonly used are the TRFC ports used in ALE
and File ports which EDI uses.
Maintain Distribution Model (TCODE BD64)
o The distribution model describes the ALE message flows between
logical systems. Applications and the ALE layer use the distribution
model to determine receivers and to control the data distribution. In
the distribution model we can specify the messages to be sent to a
given logical system. We can also define the conditions for the
content and dispatch of messages in the filters.
Generate/Create Partner Profile (TCODE BD82/WE20)
o The partner profiles define the conditions for the interchange of
data in an ALE environment with a trading partner using the IDOC
interface. To communicate with a partner using the IDOC interface,
we must have a partner profile.
o A system always uses the partner profile of the partner it
communicates with. So source system refers the target by the
targets partner profile created in source system. Similarly, target
system refers the source by the sources partner profile created in
target system.
Create IDOC generation program (TCODE SE38)
o Finally, we create the program which will fill up the required data in
IDOC and then send the Document to the destination.