SAP ABAP, Netweaver, ERP Tutorial

BDC is abbreviation for Batch Data Communication. It is a common data transportation method and is especially useful in large data communication scenario. There are two methods to run BDC program. One is using statement ‘Call Transaction’ directly. In this method, the screen is simulated directly but difficult for error processing. The other method is to create a BDC session. Actual data transportation is executed when running this BDC session. I will explain the two methods further.

What is ALE?

ALE is the abbriviation for Application Link Enabling. It is the middleware in order to integrate the SAP systems and non-SAP systems as well as among SAP systems. IDoc represents for intermidiate document. It is the exchange data format of ALE process. IDoc can also be used in EDI scenario.

Why need ALE?

The increasing globalizaiton of markets has led to the increasing separation of orgnizational units. One central instance cannot fulfill the whole business reuirements. Some work steps need to be carried out locally but also be part of a distributed business process. The corresponding master data and transaction data need to be synchronized between these systems.

SAP provides several function modules to send email to the external world. The interfaces of them are more or less the same, just with some minor difference.

Function Group: SOI1 – API Function Modules for Externals

Function Module:

SO_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1 – SAPoffice: Send new document with attachments using RFC
SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1 – SAPoffice: Send new document
SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1 – SAPoffice: Send new document with attachments using RFC

Troubleshooting for BAPI problems is difficult if the parameters transferred to the interface are not completely available as a test data record. This is particularly problematic if the BAPI is called by RFC, and then debugging is very complicated or cannot be performed at all.

What does the interface mean?

Interface means the communication interface between different systems in an enterprise enviroment. SAP provides a comprehensive solution for different industries. A company still needs a lot other systems to make daily work more effectively. Different SAP systems also need to communicate each other to exchange business data.

SAP provides several technologies to achieve this goal. Below is list of these technologies.
1. BAPI/Remote Function module
2. ALE/EDI/IDoc
3. Use middleware like PI(Process Integration)
4. File System