Differences between ale IDOC-BDOC and IDOC

I. Description

IDOC: An intermediate document (IDOC) is a SAP standard format for data transfer between systems.
Idocs are mainly used for application link enabling (ALE) and for Electronic Data Interchange
(EDI). They are not used for processing inside an application.

Dboc: business events ents (bdocs) are used by the CRM middleware to exchange data with mobile
Clients. Furthermore bdocs are the central data structure to Process Business Objects internally.
In contrast to idocs, for which the internal processing has to be implemented manually, the coding
Process BDOC may be generated automatically.

Ii. Technical Comparison
Business Document

• Trfc or qrfc
• Usage in CRM for data exchange
• Possibly complex data structures
• Both in transport and processing
• Runtime objects, e.g. services generated from BDOC Repository Information
• Internally created
• Uses Delta Field Communication

Intermediate document

• Asynchronous
• Usage in ale and EDI
• Consisting of control record, data record, status record
• Message-oriented
• Transfers all fields