ALE (Application Link Enabling) provides for the integration of distributed applications.
Applications are distributed because of the following reasons :
- System Performance: The transaction load is too heavy for a single
SAP system. - High Availability Requirements: The Company cannot afford downtime due to backups, maintenance, upgrades, etc.
- SAP Release Coordination: Different units of the organization may require different releases of the SAP software.
- Very Large Database: Companies with very large databases may need to distribute the data across multiple SAP systems.
- Business Structure: Business units may require independence and autonomy for day-to-day operations, and yet still need to share some data and functionality with other units in the enterprise.
- Interfacing with non-SAP systems: The Company may wish to maintain certain applications on non-SAP systems, while at the same time integrate these applications and their data with the SAP system.
- Keep development system data in sync with production data: An organization may wish to keep the data on a development system the same as on a production system.
- Maintain configuration and master data across clients: Organizations using multiple clients may wish to maintain certain data on a client-independent basis.
ALE allows you to:
- Distribute your applications across several SAP systems, such that centralized functions, as well as decentralized functions can operate in the same company arena.
- Maintain and distribute master data elements from a central system, thus maintaining unique number ranges across several systems.
- Maintain and distribute control data objects from a central system, thus synchronizing important configuration data. This is important when trying to decentralise functions, yet keep them integrated.
- Couple R/2 and R/3 systems, in some instances
- Couple SAP and external systems, via IDocs (Intermediate Documents) and an external translation mechanism.
