The ALE concept involves using external converters to connect non-SAP systems to the R/3 System.External converters are generic format conversion programs. The following converter functions arecovered by SAP XA-ALE certification:
- The transfer of R/3 intermediate document (IDoc) formats straight into their own repository so that these data descriptions can be used as source or target structures when assigning data fields.
- Adoption and conversion of intermediate documents from R/3 Systems via the ALE interface —a remote function call that can be called up using a normal transaction.
- Conversion of any data format into intermediate document structures and import into the R/3 System via a remote function call in the ALE interface.
ALE converters enhance the concept of EDI subsystem interfaces by:
- Using direct program-to-program communication instead of a file interface to transfer IDocs
- Recognizing the format of any interface structure of a non-SAP system and not just standard EDIFACT or ANSI-X12 formats.