ALE business object structure

During ALE processing, the adapter exchanges business objects with the SAP application. The business object represents an individual IDoc or an IDoc packet. This business object is a top-level wrapper object that contains one or more IDoc child objects, each one corresponding to a single IDoc. The same business object format is used for inbound and outbound processing.

Wrapper business object

The wrapper business object contains a transaction ID, a queue name, and one or more IDoc business objects. The transaction ID (SAPTransactionID) is used to ensure once-only delivery of business objects, and the queue name (qRFCQueueName) specifies the name of the queue on the SAP server to which the IDocs should be delivered. If you are not using transaction IDs or queues, these properties are blank.

For individual IDocs, the wrapper business object contains only one instance of an IDoc business object. For IDoc packets, the wrapper business object contains multiple instances of an IDoc business object.

Note that the transaction ID and queue name attributes are present in the business object even if you are not using the tRFC or qRFC features.

You can generate business object names to match the SAP XI standard by selecting Generate business objects according to SAP naming conventions. For more information, see SAP connection properties for the Adapter Connection wizard.

IDoc business object

The IDoc business object contains the following objects:

Control record: The control record business object contains the metadata required by the adapter to process the business object.
The control record can be generated from SAP field names or from SAP field descriptions. While configuring the properties for the control record you can specify if you want the control record to be generated from SAP field names or from SAP field descriptions. If you want the control record generated from field names, select the check box to use SAP field names to generate attribute names.
Data record: The data record business object contains the business object data to be processed by the SAP application and the metadata required for the adapter to convert it to an IDoc structure for the RFC call.
The data record business object is generated for a parsed IDoc. The data record business object contains all the segments of the IDoc. Each segment in turn has a child business object. The segment attributes can also be generated by using SAP field names or field descriptions. You can use SAP field names to generate attribute names.

Dummy keys are not used in IBM® App Connect Enterprise.

Unparsed IDocs

For an unparsed IDoc, in which the data part of the IDoc is not parsed by the adapter, the IDoc business object contains a dummy key, a control record, and the IDoc data. The IDoc data is of hexBinary type and represents the whole data record containing segments in binary content.