ALE Vs XI..

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I want to knw wht r the advantages and disadvantages of XI over ALE???

thnx in advance..

NEW XI

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

ALE stands for Application Linking and Enabling. As the name suggests ALE is an interface which is a part of SAPu2019s Business Framework Architecture (BFA). It enables integration and asynchronous data transfer between two or more SAP systems or SAP and non-SAP systems. IDOCS (intermediate document) are used for data transfer between the systems.

XI is an EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) tool and it brings the concept of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).

Why XI is better than ALE?

1. XI acts as a middleware and provides single point of integration for all the systems while ALE is an interface which provides point-to-point integration.

2. XI provides pre-defined content unlike ALE.

3. XI has open architecture and uses open standards like XML.

4. It introduces the concept of BPM which enables message splitting in a complex scenario.

5. Reduces the maintenance cost in case of complex business landscapes.

6. XI brings with itself something called as centralized integration platform. In other words it avoids hard coded settings.

Why ALE is better than XI?

1. In a scenario where only two systems are involved one can use ALE. There is no need of XI as the scenario is not complex. Thus it reduces the additional cost of using XI.

2. If one doesnu2019t have to implement a business logic in the middleware and simply pass an IDOC in that case only ALE can be used you need not couple it with XI.

Hope dis will help u..

Regds,

Pinangshuk.

[Former Member]

There are lot of changes and differences between ALE and XI

ALE is used for distributing the data to Non or SAP systems which can be done only in terms of either RFC or Idoc format

where structural transformations cannot be done using ALE which can done using XI /PI...

Also ALE can be used only when SAP system is used

if data needs to be exchanged between two Non SAP systems then XI/PI comes into picture

HTH

Rajesh

[Former Member]

Hi,

ALE is an interface and xi is an midddleware tool. Please see some differences in this threads:

For more information you can do a simple search in SDN which should help you out.

Regards,

---Satish

[agasthuri_doss]

Hey,

ALE provides with an interface (for instance: BAPI) to R/3 to facilitate data exchange to or from external R/3 systems.

Distribution services: the onus of filtering and converting messages exchanged between SAP and non-SAP systems is on the distribution layer of ALE. This service is the core service and acts as a sandwich layer between application and communication layers.

Where as SAP XI plays a role as an integration tool, where Error momtoring, Transformation, Validation etc can be done.

Cheers

Agasthuri