SAP Basis

BASIS provides administrative tools for SAP. 

It is a logical collection of R/3 software components. Basis is the layer between the hardware and R/3 system software.

BASIS provides for the following support in below mention areas 

• Tools for administration:

Basis includes various administration tools for managing the system resources like hardware, software and printers. It includes tools for monitoring the system performance, monitoring user sessions, setting up alerts and deriving various statistics and graphs which give indications of the system performance.

• User Administration:

This includes creating user ids, modifying user details and deleting users ids, viewing system users, sending messages to multiple users.

• Run time environment for the user:

The run time environment for the user includes the default menu path for the user, the date format for the user, the default printer for the user, changing user’s password.

• Provide Authorizations to the users:

In order to enable the user to access the various transactions, it is essential that the users have the correct set of authorisations. Setting of authorisations for the users based on their job roles. An authorisation tool is used to create the user authorisations. Once the authorisations have been created, profiles are created and the authorisations are attached to them. Each profile can have many such authorisations attached to them. The profiles are created based on the role definition of the user in the company. After the authorisations and profiles are created, user ids are created and the profiles are attached to the user profiles. Each user id could have multiple user profiles attached to them. For example, if we create a user profile for a business head, then that user id could have profiles relating to various departments / job definitions attached to it.

• Printer Administration:

This includes installing the network printers and local and remote printers for the users, setting up printer queues, and managing printer spooler.

• System Administration:

This includes starting and stopping the SAP service manager, diagnosing the system start-up, monitoring work processes, viewing transaction codes, clearing locked entries, monitoring system updates, transport of customising change requests and ABAP change requests at the OS level.

• Database Administration (including Backup and Restore):

Database management including database backup and restore, database performance monitor, and analysing database activity.

• Interfaces with non-SAP products:

BASIS also includes tools for interfacing with non-SAP products, which will continued to be in use in the organisation.

ALE Distribution model and data filtering

Definition of the distribution model and data filtering
We have already seen that the distribution model is used to decide who sends what to who. But, as you guessed, there is a little bit more to be said about it and the way to manage it.

The distribution model is maintained in a central transaction (BD64) which lets you access the most useful environmental settings necessary to set up the model. Before creating the model, you must first decide on which system you are going to create it. Indeed the model must exist in all partners systems and two possibilities exist to achieve this.

Either you create the model on each system manually (with the same model technical name), which is feasible only with few systems and/or simple models. Either you create it in a specific system (usually the source system) and distribute it to the other systems thanks to the distribution command in the BD64 transaction menu.

If we want to copy the customers master data from the production system to the other systems in the maintenance line for example, we may create the distribution model on the production system and distribute it to all partners systems.


The actual creation of the model requests that you mention a technical name for the model (unique identifier in the systems landscape), a sender system, a receiver system and message types to exchange between those systems. You may afterwards add more sending and receiving systems in the model as well as more message types.



For each message type defined between a sender and a receiver, you may set filters on specific fields of the message type so that IDocs be generated only when these specific values are matched. For example, you may decide to send only customers of a specific account group. These filters are set by selecting the 'no filter set' text under message types in BD64.





There exists also another kind of filters which are segments filters. They do not filter IDocs creation based on values like we have just seen but filter unconditionally segments of created IDocs which must be excluded from the transfer (transaction BD56).

ALE EDI -Partners profiles

Partners profiles

In SAP, all partners systems involved in a distribution model have a profile. There exist several profile types such as customers profiles, vendors profiles, ... but this distinction between profiles is generally not necessary and you will create in most cases your partners profiles using a generic Logical System type.

Before entering the settings of the logical systems partners, you have to create them in customizing. Also, each system in the distribution model must be assigned in its own system its own logical system that represents it. This assignment is done at client level and not at system level. This is not easy to explain nor to understand so let's take a simple example. Let's consider we have a simple distribution model made up of a sender system (S01) and a receiver system (R01). We need to transfer data from S01 / client 100 to R01 / client 200. In both the systems, we will define the logical systems S01_100 and R01_200. But in sender system S01, the logical system S01_100 will be assigned to the client 100 while in the receiver system R01, it will be R01_200 that will be assigned to client 200. With such a configuration you see it is even possible to transfer data between two clients from the same system.

A partner profile is used to determine a lot of important settings that will be involved in the data transfer. These settings vary depending on the role of the partner system (sender / receiver) and are defined per message type. A message type is more or less a version independent IDoc type. It is mainly a convenient way of defining settings and identifying IDocs using a criterium independent of the partner system.


For a sender partner system (inbound parameters are filled in), following important settings are set per message type in the partner profile: 

• A process code used to indicate which function module will be used to convert the IDoc data to SAP data. 
• The time of input of the IDoc: as soon as the IDoc is created in the system or on request (using program RBDAPP01). 
• The post processing agent who will have to treat the data input errors if need be. The post processing agent may be either a user or any other HR organizational unit. 

For a receiver partner system (outbound parameters are filled in), following settings are specified in the partner profile:



The receiver port to which the data will be sent.
The sending method: one IDoc at a time or by packets.
The IDoc type that will be sent to that partner. For a given message type, the IDoc type sent may vary depending on the receiver system. Indeed you may have different versions of SAP in your system landscape.