Smart forms - SAP SD

[Former Member]

Dears,

Greetings for the day.

I found very interesting to understand the below terms,

1) EDI - Electronic Data Interchange

2) I Doc - Intermediate Dcoument

3) ALE - Application Link Enabling

Based on my research & reference, my understanding is that, all these 3 application areas will help the SAP system to communicate with other non SAP applications & vice versa.

Also I doc or EDI will help when we are converting non SAP system to an SAP system while converting existing Data base.

I seeking more information on this, If you please help me on this, that would be greatful.

I would like to know, what is "Smartforms", what is the relevant & where we are using this forms in SAP SD.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Thanks & Regards,

Mathews P.Mammen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mammen,

Your research was good and i am here add some more points.

EDI: is a electronic data interchange is the electronic exchange of business data between the two partners,from SD point of view common use of EDI is to exhange transaction about the sales order, delivery , and invoice with your customers.

ALE: Application link enabling, enables the link together of different application running on different system for eg: If you have SAP and Non SAP system in landscape, you can share the customer and material master data with all the system using ALE

Idocs: Intermediate document (Idocs)is a document exchage format use by SAP to Send and Recieve messages between two application systems.

Using the idocs , you can send and recieve the structured messages Between the business partners such as vendors and customers.

SAP Smart Forms is used to create and maintain forms for mass printing in SAP Systems. As output medium SAP Smart Forms support a printer, a fax, e-mail, or the Internet (by using the generated XML output).

SAP introduced Smart Forms in 1998 to overcome the limitations in SAP Scripts. Smart Forms are easier to develop, maintain and transport than SAP Script.

Note : information taken from different books.

Regards,

Rao.