V Urgent : Linking SAP Supply Chain through ALE/EDI

[Former Member]

Hi All

Am new to SAP supply chain , where in APO is being used by our client . They have just raised an urgent requirement of a position with ALE/EDI expertise for this supply chain project.

Can anyone give me some insight or any help please to my following queries :

1> how exactly APO (Sap supply chain system) will be needing ALE/EDI technologies?

2>How APO makes use of this EDI technology and what for ?

3>Is EDI /ALE technology only for interfacing with R/3 from APO isde? .

4> Does EDI /ALE technology on the APO system runs exactly same as that of R/3? . In other words , does same basics and function modules that we use in R/3 is used by APO too?

5> Does development in APO requires ABAP?

Please help me out of the EDI/ALE perspective that might be needed when you work on a SAP supply chain project .

Any inputs is highly appreciated and I promise to return and reward the answers which helps me indeed here

Best Reagards

Rohan

[Former Member]

Hi Rohan,

I can help on some of these:

<b>1.</b> APO will use ALE/EDI (what this actually means is Idoc technology) to share data between the R/3 system and APO. For example, in APO you will need to have information about materials. These materials reside in R/3. Rather than creating the materials manually in both systems, you can just create them in R/3 and they will be transferred using Idocs to the APO system

<b>2.</b> APO would not use EDI technology as such, it would use Idocs to communicate with R/3. When a company requests ALE/EDI expertise they are generally asking for Idoc experts. There are some special functions which are unique to ALE which are not in EDI and vice versa, but generally they share about 90% of their technology.

<b>3.</b> EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is generally used for conducting business transactions between the company and its trading partners. Examples include sending a purchase order to a vendor which then automatically creates a sales order on their side. Generally this functionality is focussed on purchasing and sales functions (sometimes also inventory and forecasting data). ALE (Application Link Enabling) is generally used for interfacing one or more systems with your SAP system. Examples include linking your SAP R/3 system to an external warehouse management system, linking R/3 to an external CRM system and so on.

So, no, these technologies are not just for connecting to APO, they have many and varied uses.

<b>4.</b> The technology is exactly the same on R/3 as APO. This is what allows them to communicate with each other without message translation. Both R/3 and APO run predominately on the ABAP stack (currently anyway) and use the same Idoc subsystem. There may be some differences in what happens to an idoc when its passed to the application but the underlying technology is the same.

<b>5.</b> APO runs predominately on the ABAP stack, the same as R/3. So yes you can write ABAP programs just the same as in R/3. And for the same reasons, you might need a userexit, a report, etc. the same as you would need in R/3.

I hope that answers your questions Rohan. In general, the technology is the same as you have used in R/3. But, having said that, the challenge with SAP is never the technology (ABAP, after all, is fairly intuitive and easy to grasp), but knowing the application. What are the tables, the business flows, the documents, and how do they interact. Thats where the steeping learning curve is.

Cheers,

Brad

Message was edited by: Brad Williams

[Former Member]

Hi Rohan,

ALE/EDI works the same way on APO as on R3, however you will need to analyse the scenarios which need integration. Some scenarios are supported by SAP, for those you can expect to find standard IDOCS and process codes. Scenarios which are not supported, you will need to develop your own IDOC's or Process codes.

Check out following link for the IDOC's and ALE messages supported by SAP :-

http://ifr.sap.com/catalog/query.asp

Regards,

Sanjeev