Application Link Enabling (ALE) technology enables communication between SAP and external systems such as Novell® eDirectory™. ALE is comprised of various components. If you want to distribute User modification data automatically from the SAP system to eDirectory, you must configure the ALE and CUA systems. If your integration requires only reading and writing data to the SAP system, this configuration is not necessary.
When configuring the SAP system to enable the driver, you should consider the following ALE components and their relationship to the driver:
Refer to Configuring the SAP System for instructions on how to configure these SAP system parameters.
In the SAP configuration for the driver, a logical system is a representation of either a SAP system or an external system. The logical system is used to distribute data to and from SAP. To use ALE, every SAP system needs to have a base logical system associated with a client. There is a one-to-one relationship between the client and the logical system.
The driver uses an outbound ALE interface. In an outbound ALE interface, the base logical system becomes the sender for outbound messages and the receiver of inbound messages. A SAP user is likely logged into the base logical system/client when making changes to the database (for example, modifying User profiles or logon preferences). A logical system/client must also be defined for the receiving client. This logical system acts as the receiver of outbound messages.
A message type represents the type of data that is exchanged between the two systems. For this driver, the USERCLONE message type is used. A message type characterizes data being sent across the systems and relates to the structure of the data, also known as an IDoc type (for example, USERCLONE03).
Intermediate Document (IDoc) Type represents the structure of the data associated with a message type. ALE technology uses IDocs to exchange data between logical systems. An IDoc is an object with the data of a specific message type in it. IDocs consist of three record types:
The control record
The data record
The status record
The control record contains information about the IDoc, such as what IDoc type it is, the message type, the sending and receiving systems, or the direction.
The data record contains the application data. Data records consist of several fields that describe the content of the specific object.
The status record contains data on the state of the processing of the IDoc.
The distribution model is a tool that stores information about the flow of message types between systems. A distribution model must be configured when setting up the driver. After the two logical systems have been defined and you have a general understanding of message types and IDocs, you can configure your distribution model.
The distribution model determines what message types can be sent from a logical system to another logical system.
Partner profiles specify the components used in an outbound process. Some of these components include the IDoc type, message type, IDoc size, mode, and the person to be notified in case of errors.
A port is the communication link between the two logical systems.
A port definition is used in an outbound process to define how documents are transferred to the destination system.
A file port can be used in the integration solution. IDocs are transferred to a file in a specified file system location accessible by the SAP host system.
A Transactional Remote Function Call (TRFC) can be used in the integration solution. IDocs are transferred to a specified application process (such as the driver) via the SAP Gateway.
Central User Administration (CUA) is a process provided by SAP to distribute and manage User object data between a Central SAP logical system and one or more Client logical systems. The client logical systems might be SAP or external systems. The base technology used for the CUA is ALE.