Re: is edi translator software difficult to write? was: edivendorcomplaining

Steve -

AFAIK, most EDI packages require you (in most cases, for each version of
each document for each trading partner) to set up intermediate 'user files',
which represent the transactional information that needs to be sent/received
to the trading partner via the EDI translator.

Once you set up the 'user files', (for each document for each version for
each trading partner) you must also create the 'translation format' which
maps the data from/to the user file(s) from/to the various segments and
elements of the given EDI transaction to be sent/received.

The 'translation format' information is proprietary to each EDI vendor, so
to convert it from one EDI package to another you would need to be able
extract this information from the the (proprietary) files in their system
and be able to convert it into the format necessary in the (proprietary)
files of the new EDI packages - possibly a daunting task...

- sjl