IDOC & ALE

[Former Member]

Dear All,

What is the difference between IDOC and message type in

ALE.

Thanks in advance,

Aksher

[Former Member]

Dear All,

What is the difference between IDOC and message type in

ALE.

Thanks in advance,

Aksher

[Former Member]

Message type:

A message type represents the application message exchanged between R/3 systems and R/3 and an external system. A message type characterizes the data sent across systems and relates to the structure of the data called an IDOC type (see below). For example, MATMAS is a message type for Material Master, and INVOIC is a message type for an Invoice (Billing Document). ALE supports over 200 message types in R/3 and about 200 application areas.

IDOC type and IDOC:

An Intermediate Document (IDOC) type represents the structure of the data associated with a message type (DEBMAS02 for message type DEBMAS — Customer Master, and WMMBID02 for message type WMMBXY— Goods Movements), while an IDOC is an object containing the data of a particular message type. IDOCs are data containers with intelligence built in. Each IDOC contains one and only one business object. For example, an IDOC of type SHPMNT01, message type SHPMNT, will contain data only of one Shipment Document. Generally, the architecture of an IDOC is independent of the message type by virtue of ALE’s ability to redefine it for any message type.

So in short, message type contains the data, and idoc represents the structure of data.

[Former Member]

Hi Salahuddin,

Just a small correction. You mentioned in your last sentence:

<b>So in short, message type contains the data, </b>

Message type is a representation only. It does not contain data.

<b>and idoc represents the structure of data</b>

An IDoc type represents structure of data and the IDoc itself is a particular occurence of an IDoc type. Thus an IDoc contains application data. The difference amongst the two can be considered to be similar to a Data Type (IDoc Type) and Data Object (IDoc).

Regards