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ALE is SAP proprietary technology that enables data communications between two or
more SAP R/3 systems and/or R/3 and external systems. When a new enterprise resource
planning (ERP) solution such as R/3 is implemented, companies have to interface the
ERP system with legacy systems or other ERP systems.

ALE provides intelligent mechanisms where by clients can achieve integration as well as
distribution of applications and data.

ALE technology facilitates rapid application prototyping and application interface

development, thus reducing implementation time.

The ALE components are inherently integrated with SAP applications and are robust,
leading to a highly reliable system.

ALE comes with application distribution/integration scenarios as well as a set of tools,

programs, data definitions, and methodologies that you can easily configure to get an
interface up and running.

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BAPIs provide a stable, standardized method for third-party applications and components
to integrate into the Business Framework. These interfaces are being specified as part of
SAP's initiative with customers, partners and leading standards organizations. Also, SAP
has implemented the emerging Object Application Group (OAG) specifications with
BAPIs.



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One of the big plusses for BAPIs is that the interface and function are not supposed to
change. This is a big plus when you do upgrades or hot packs because the transaction can
change (format, required inputs etc) which means you then need to update the call
transaction.

Some of the BAPIs are better documented and easier to use than others.

You usually need to perform the BAPI that actually does the COMMIT after you call
your BAPI.

The Program coding for calling a BAPI is usually cleaner than setting up the screen flow
etc for the Call Transaction.

You don't need to worry about special data circumstances interrupting the normal data
flow of the screens and causing errors because of that.
BAPIs probably have better performance since they don't do the screen flow processing.

In general if the BAPI exists for the transaction you want to perform and you can figure
out how to use it the BAPI is probably the best way to go.

This is just from my experience working with both BAPI and Call Transaction. I have
had some very good successes with BAPIs, but very occasionally found that I could not
get the BAPI to perform the update I needed.