Re: is edi translator software difficult to write? was: edi vendor complaining

[Pete Hall <pbhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Having done exactly that for 835 documents, It may not be too difficult
for a single trading partner, but it gets more complicated when you try
to generalize on the document definition. If you build it for one
trading partner, you could probably enhance it fairly easily for new
ones, as long as you're VERY modular, and anticipate which functions are
generic, and which are trading partner specific. You will, at minimum,
need a split method , to parse the input stream based on the record
delimiter, the elements based on the element separator, and the
sub-elements based on the sub-element separator. The value of the
delimiters is extracted directly from the ISA segment, which is, not
only the first element, but fixed length and positional.

Pete Hall
pbhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


Keith Carpenter wrote:
| Steve Richter wrote:
|> is it difficult to write an EDI translator? or port code from Linux?
 I dont
|> follow why so many are locked into the Innovis package.
|
| You certainly could write your own translator.  I'm not aware of any
| open source translator, but if you come across a good one let me know.
|
| One unique advantage of buying one is you should be getting updates to
| the EDI standards (ANSI X12, EDIFACT, etc.)  This standards
| documentation is not available for free.  Again you can get around this
| by depending on documentation from your trading partner or doing some
| analysis or trial and error.
|
| If you're doing only minimal EDI, you might write something less generic
| (eg a specific program to parse an 850 order).
|
|
| keith
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