ABAP ALE Interview Questions

Q1: What are the strong features of ALE and how do we benefit from the?

A1: ALE is good because it gives the companies the possibility to enhance the performance of their business and to get solutions for technical and management problems. We can split businesses allowing operations at local level in an independent way. This splitting brings improved results to companies, better than the results that they may get at a bigger scale when they are centralized. This is because they are more flexible and this flexibility assures the adaptation of the information systems to the change speed that we find in the markets these days. Through distribution we gain a high freedom state, some of the companies that already have a good local management can make connections with the ALE businesses. Virtual connections can be made and partnerships between different companies in this way. Anyway, integration is not the best solution for all issues because many of the programs that a company uses could not be compatible with a system when we talk about complementary software and legacy systems. Companies can use a different SAP industry solution or a particular solution to a country that can’t work on the same system. If these programs run on two or more separate systems, they can’t be connected with a central database but they will use ALE as an integration method. ALE can connect SAP Core Systems to CRM, APO or Business Information Warehouse. Not only flexibility is an advantage but ALE has the great advantage of a low upgrade cost, along with other reduced costs. When the entire system works on a single integrated system the entire system has to be upgraded even in the case when just company component requires an upgrade. The Upgrade has an impact on the whole company and for this to be a success the users must be instructed with the new version. A distributed software with separate single interfaces like ALE we can concentrate to upgrade only the part of a company that is necessary to be updated while keeping the remaining parts the same with no update or instructions; the advantages of this procedure are obvious- saving big amounts of money and protecting the current investments. There is one more cost element that influences the communication cost, it is cheaper to have a 64k line connection to the central system than to have an overseas type of connection.

Q2: What is the meaning of ALE?

A2: ALE or Application Link Enabling is the totality of tools and business processes that can give the programs the possibility to connect from different computers. The computer can be two or multiple SAP systems or they can be SAP and non SAP. In one SAP system, through one database multiple applications can be incorporated. As example: sales, production, finances, human resources etc. The business that ALE is providing can connect programs from various platforms. Some of the ALE businesses are found in the SAP standard system, but with the aid of some utilities we can modify the current processes of ALE businesses or insert fresh processes. Along with the normal business processes there are specific ALE services needed for configuring the distributed environment control, services that contain business object synchronization, distribution model or utilities for error management and monitoring. Being a component of the SAP Business Architecture, ALE allows the cooperation of the framework parts, it works like a glue for the Business Framework.