What is DME,EDI and IDOCs, and anybody can tell the differences among them

Question

Hai
I would likt to know in detail exactly how does these DME, EDI and IDOC do work and in what way they serve the purpose of meeting the payment requirements.
I appreciate the early response and I will extend my Gratitude in advance.
Regards,
Akash Narayana

Answer 1

Hi Akash,
The
Data Medium Exchange (DME) Engine enables you to define file formats that meet the requirements of your financial institution. By doing so, you model an externally defined bank format in the R/3 System, which allows you to send or receive data in the form of DME files in this format.
The ability to define these formats in the R/3 System is particularly important as there is no worldwide or regional standard format. In some cases, no country standard exists and the file must comply with bank-specific standards. Covering such numerous and varied local format requirements is very difficult in standard software, but the DME Engine now enables you to define your particular local format yourself – without any ABAP programming knowledge or coding. With this Customizing tool, in the form of a graphical editor, you can define new formats flexibly and, as format requirements change, modify existing ones efficiently.
Integration
Once you have modeled an external file format as a format tree in the DME Engine, calling applications can use it to:
· Generate an outgoing DME file as a flat file or an XML file
· Convert an incoming DME file to a format that the R/3 System can process
Features
The system comes complete with predefined format trees, which represent the file format requirements in a number of countries.
You can also transport format trees to other systems, or alternatively upload and download as XML files.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a set of standards for structuring information to be electronically exchanged between and within businesses, organizations, government entities and other groups. The standards describe structures that emulate documents, for example purchase orders to automate purchasing. The term EDI is also used to refer to the implementation and operation of systems and processes for creating, transmitting, and receiving EDI documents.
Despite being relatively unheralded, in this era of technologies such as XML services, the Internet and the World Wide Web, EDI is still the data format used by the vast majority of electronic commerce transactions in the world.
IDoc (for intermediate document) is a standard data structure for electronic data interchange (EDI) between application programs written for the popular SAP business system or between an SAP application and an external program. IDocs serve as the vehicle for data transfer in SAP's Application Link Enabling (ALE) system. IDocs are used for asynchronous transactions: each IDoc generated exists as a self-contained text file that can then be transmitted to the requesting workstation without connecting to the central database. Another SAP mechanism, the Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI) is used for synchronous transactions. 
I hope the above helps.
Do not forget to award the points please.
Regards,
Jacob