The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

Like the exchange of data between Sellers and Suppliers, the exchange of data within the company is vital to successful processing of transactions.  This could be the Seller or the Supplier, it doesn’t really matter.  As data passes from the processing application, to the external interface.  We have a concept that is called a Canonical form of data.  Canonical data is the data that is required and essential to completing your business.  I have written about this in passing before, but today I want to talk about what goes in it, and what it looks like. (more…)

I have been studying some on the SEF format.  SEF stands for Standards Exchange Format.  This is a file that defines the EDI standard so that you can use a validation or standard and usage document editor to create nice, and clean specifications for you and your trading partners.

I have used Foresights EDISIM, but I wonder what others use.  I have found a few links to SEF software, and will list them below.

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If you are going to work with XML, you will need to understand Xpath.  Xpath is the syntax by which elements or data inside an XML file are referenced.  Parsers and XSLT use Xpath so that they can find the data that needs to be parsed or transformed.  If you understand the fundamentals of XML and how it is formed, understanding Xpath is a logical next step.  This is a brief explanation of how Xpath works and how it is used. (more…)

A reader asked me a question, and I want to pass it along: “Do you know of any DOT NET frameworks for working with EDI?”

I didn’t, and a search of the web didn’t reveal anything that I could, in any confidence, recommend.  So I bring this question to you.  Do you know of a DOT NET framework that can be used for generating and or parsing EDI data?  If  you do, please comment below and let everyone know.  I will also pass it on to my friend who is looking for this.

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Whether we are talking about e-commerce or any other movement of data, we will need to capture points of data to ensure proper monitoring and reliability. There is an overall strategy to this, and three types of data points that should be monitored; Points that are convenient. Points that are helpful.  And points that are necessary. With these points monitored and the data that passes them recorded and aggregated properly, a reliable and supportable system is created. (more…)

The Integration Engineer has been on-line for a whole year now, and I feel like it is time to look back and take stock of what I set out to do here, and what happened to that vision.  So today I am departing from my normal task of writing integration tips, tutorials, and experiences and am going to talk about this blog itself.

Starting out over a year ago, I started toying with the idea of going on-line and starting a blog.  I saw other people doing this and read some of their stories of how they got started.  I toyed with doing something on one of my hobbies, but settled on the area that I knew the most about, and that would be integration engineering.  I did some additional research and picked a hosting provider and a blog platform that seemed to be the easiest to work with.  I settled on wordpress as there seemed to be the most support for this and everyone seemed to be talking about it.  (And I just wanted to write, not learn a new EAI) (more…)