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I'm new to EDI and have to implement it in a legacy system.

I want to make sure I have the higher level overview correct:

1) Generate EDI file from my system for a given trading partner 2) Probably FTP it to them 3) response is ftp'd to me and I scrape that back into my system

Do I about have the concept down?

I understand most trading partners tweak the standards so there's quite a lot of work there?

Richard Holland
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2 Answers2

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You have the workflow down at a VERY high level

As always, the devil is in the details.

  • Terminology - segments / elements / delimiters

  • Enveloping the data (ISA / GS / SE segments)

  • Control numbers on the envelopes

  • Communication - is it really FTP? clear or secure? what about VAN or AS2 protocols?

  • Business Logic - application side, or translation side? Which makes
    more sense?

  • 997 Reconciliation

  • Document Auditing (required? To what level?)

  • Partner testing protocols

Consider my environment for vendor facing EDI:

  • 850 PO out
  • 997 in to us
  • 855 in to us
  • 997 out from us
  • 856 in to us
  • 997 out from us
  • 810 in to us
  • 997 out from us

For customer facing EDI:

  • 850 in to us
  • 997 out from us
  • 855 out from us
  • 997 in to us
  • 810 out from us
  • 997 in to us

As you can see, a few documents in our life cycle for a transaction.

What documents are you working with? If it is an 837, generating an EDI file is not trivial. Even if it in an 856, you have to deal with hierarchical loops that you have to account for when translating (more so with the 837 though).

Are you planning on writing your own parser / translator? If so, why? Are you going to write your own acknowledgement reconciliation routine? Syntax validation? The best thing is to connect your legacy application with a commercial translator rather then reinvent the 30 year old wheel. Lots of drag / drop mappers that can connect to legacy systems (Delta is probably one of the best on the market, but there are some quality open source alternatives like BOTS) . The X12 standard has a little wiggle room for bastardization. I've seem some crazy implementations though. By and large, more partners conform rather than do what they want. The ones that have wild requirements usually opt for XML, as they have more range in the document structure and aren't limited by standard. If you have 4 partners and 2 are version 4010, and 2 are 5010, then you would have to code (or map) accordingly. There are tools out there to help, but again, the devil is in the details.

Andrew
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  • I have 210 and 214 specs from a partner. Most of the mappers we've found are really expensive. Interesting though... I definitely do not want to reinvent wheels but I have to get my customers to pay for the mapping as I have 10-20 that need EDI added to my desktop software. – Richard Holland Sep 24 '12 at 14:47
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    What mappers have you looked at? The 210 and 214 aren't that bad to parse / translate, but as I said in my response, there's a lot of other things that need to be looked at outside the translation process (business logic, auditing, etc). For less than $20K, I can recommend a universal data translator / comm package that would allow you to solve any integration challenge - does that fit under the banner of "really expensive" though? At which point, BOTS might be a better solution for you, or http://www.edidev.com/ (I just prefer full featured, end to end solutions like Delta / ECS) – Andrew Sep 24 '12 at 15:15
  • Thanks for the help, think I have what I need Andrew. – Richard Holland Sep 24 '12 at 15:47
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    he Andrew, thanks for calling Bots a quality product. Have you been working with it? PS: I am the main developer ;-) – eppye Sep 24 '12 at 22:41
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    @eppye - you and I have both been around a long time. I haven't worked with BOTS recently, but have kept tabs on the development, on here and EDI-L. I'm always looking at new translators and have worked with over 10 in commercial environments. – Andrew Sep 25 '12 at 18:49
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a good tutorial can be found at http://www.rdpcrystal.com/what-is-edi/

it shows the basic interaction between EDI parties as well as message information

cobra
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