Purpose
In Application Link Enabling, youuse this program to distribute basic and structure data (i.e. layoutareas and layout hierarchies) of product catalogs by directly sendingthe data to other systems.

Features
Message type "PCHEAD", displayed in the field Catalog message type
should generally be used to distribute basic and structure data ofproduct catalogs (however, see also &HINWEIS& below).

Selection
If you only select one catalog, you can select the relevant fields fromthe variants of the catalog that are to be sent. Inthis case, texts are only distributed in the selected variantlanguages, and prices are only distributed in the variant currencies.
By entering logical systems in the relevant fields, you canlimit the list of IDoc recipients (stored in thedistribution model of Customizings foristribution (ALE)) to the recipients entered.
In the field Max. layout areas / IDoc, you can enter the maximumnumber of layout areas that can be sent together in one IDoc. If youexpect a lot of errors to occur in the receiving system when IDocs areposted, you should keep this value as low as possible, to make iteasier to find these errors. However, if few/no errors are expected,the value should be as high as possible, to obtain best possibleperformance during transfer.
If you select the Create material IDocs indicator, you can alsosend the materials referenced in the product catalog variants using thereport for material master data. For information on the parametershere, please see the related documentation.
If you select the Create document IDocs indicator, you can alsosend the documents assigned to the layout areas.
If you select the Create characteristic IDocs, Createclassification IDocs and Create class IDocs
, you can send characteristics, clasification, and classes of thelayout areas of the product catalog using the report for classificationdata.
If you enter a server group in the relevant field, the selecteddata is sent to the application server of this server group. If thedata of several product catalogs is distributed, a separate process isstarted on the application server for each individual product catalog.

Prerequisites
Catalog data can only be distributed by ALE to network systems forwhich the necessary settings have been made in Customizing fordistribution.
INCLUDE ISR_CUSTOMIZING
IF &DEVICE&='SCREEN'
In particular, the BAPIsProductCatalog.SaveHeadReplicaandProductCatalog.SaveItemsReplicamust be assigned to these systems in the distributionmodel (under Model and implement business processes >Maintain distribution model). If dependent data (customers,materials, documents, classification) is to be distributed with thepurely catalog-related data, the necessary entries must also be madefor this in the distribution model.
INCLUDE RWPC_DISTMODEL OBJECT DOKU ID TX
INCLUDE RWPC_DISTMODEL_2 OBJECT DOKU ID TX
ALE distribution of product catalog also requires that the cataloglayouts to be distributed have the same layout number for all thesystems in a network. In addition, layout numbers of catalogs fromvarious systems that are to be replicated via ALE in the same receivingsystem cannot be the same, and catalogs created online in the receivingsystem cannot have the same number as layouts sent via ALE, as if theydo, data may be overwritten.
Therefore, in the receiving system, reserve separate layout numberranges for all original systems from which catalogdata is to be replicated via ALE.
The necessary steps can be found in Customizing for theproduct catalog under Assign number ranges to layout in ALEinbound.
ENDIF

Hinweis
In addition to message type PCHEAD (from Release 4.6A), message typePRDCAT (and those referencing it as of Release 4.0A) is available fordistributing basic and structure data of product catalogs. PRDCATshould only be used if this is unavoidable for reasons ofcompatibility, as it will not be taken into consideration in futuredevelopments, and all above-mentioned selection options, as well asintegrated transfer (with the exception of document IDocs) are notavailable for this message type.

Further_hints
If the settings for inbound processing of dependent data are made sothat incoming IDocs are posted directly in thereceiving system, errors may occur if the IDoc containing the basic andstructure data has not already been posted. In this case, the IDocscontaining the dependent data must be posted again (for example in aspecially scheduled job that posted all IDocs again if they were notprocessed correctly).
To avoid this problem, you can schedule a periodic job for posting thebasic and structure data, and another for posting the dependentobjects. If you allow sufficient time between the job for basic andstructure data and the job for dependent data, you can ensure that theIDocs containing the basic and structure data are posted before thosecontaining the dependent data.