1.0 Introduction

Enterprises are increasingly looking to deliver real business benefits by integrating their systems and processes both within their organizations and between organizations. ng processes in this way, which requires tight integration, frequent communication and data exchange.

Highly integrated and inter-dependent SAP and non-SAP systems require frequent communication, tight integration and (usually) high levels of data exchange. In order to achieve this interoperability, SAP has come up with the concept of ALE (Application Linking and Enabling).

The idea behind ALE is to provide a more rigid integration service while allowing a high degree of independence to the individual SAP com

ge of business information across SAP and non-SAP systems. Applications are integrated by using synchronous and asynchronous communication without implementing a central database.