Purpose
In Application Link Enabling youuse this program to distribute changes to basic and structure data(i.e. layout areas and layout hierarchies) of product catalogs bysending the data via change pointers to other systems.

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

Selection
In the Final date for change pointers, you can enter the date upto which change pointers are to be evaluated. The change pointers arenot reset if the Do not evaluate change poiners is selected.The indicatr is usually only selected for the purposes of testing anALE connection.
If you only select on catalog, you can select the relevant fields fromthe variants of this catalog that are to be sent. Inthis case, texts are only distributed in the selected variantlanguages, ad prices are only distribued in the variant currencies.
In the field Max. layout areas / IDoc, you can enter the maximumnumber of layut 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 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 distribued, a separate process isstarted on the application server for each individual process.

Prerequisites
INCLUDE RWPC_CHANGEPOINTERS OBJECT DOKU ID TX
INCLUDE ISR_CUSTOMIZING
IF &DEVICE&='SCREEN'
Catalog data can only be distributed by ALE to network systems forwhich the necessary settings have been made in Customizing fordistribution (ALE).
In particular, the BAPIsProductCatalog.SaveHeadReplicaandProductCatalog.SaveItemsReplicamust be assigned to the systems in the Distribution model
(under Model and implement business processes >Maintain distribution model )
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.