The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

What is in the ISA?

The ISA Segment is the first segment in any EDI document.  Once you understand what it is saying, This long random seeming string will make sense, and be very helpful in helping you relate EDI documents to the real world task that you need to do. Read the rest of this entry »

When the definition for a data field or element is undefined or otherwise open to the whim of the user, we are asking for trouble.  Not in the sense that this causes trouble.  But how it is then used that causes trouble.  And this is not to pick on the CDATA tag in XML or ZZ qualified elements in EDI.  It seems that every data format of any size of adoption commits this sin of categorisation.

My general recommendation is to avoid using undefined or user defined data.  Relying on a user defined field that we use to solve a problem by working around some limitation (or perceived limitation) of the file data definition, may give us a feeling of power.  But over the long haul turns the implementation into a proprietary implementation that is not reusable with more than one trading partner.

And having each integration using a slightly unique implementation leads to chaos.  Both in suppport, and in the applicaiton of updates.

Undefined data exists.  People will use it.  You will have to deal with it as some time, but whenever possible. avaid making it a critical part of the implementation, and always provide it with a healty dose of error handling.

If you are using a tool that asks you to place a tag or script onto your homepage or in every page so that it can track affiliate links or other useful SEO data, you may want to dig into your theme and add it to your header.phtml file.

But on the other hand, you may not.  And sometimes you just need to add a meta tag to show that you own the site to Google or some other entity that tries to make sure it only tracks legitimate data and sites.  And you only need to add it for a verification cycle. Read the rest of this entry »

“Is not the beginning of wisdom the words: ‘I do not know’?”

– Data, Star Trek: Next Generation: “Where Silence Has Lease“

If the beginning of wisdom is to realize what it is that we do not know. NULL, by its definition is this not knowing.  We do not know what NULL is, this is why it is NULL. Read the rest of this entry »

Just like synergy, a projects time-line is generally greater than the sum of its tasks.  Taking the time to complete tasks in a project together, there will need to be time between tasks.  Some of this time will just be spent updating people, and coordination of project participants.  There are also other needs, like water and bio-breaks.

Just like productivity during the day generally gives people a 15 minute break every 3 hrs or so.  When we plan our projects, we need to include not just the time that it takes to perform the collective tasks, but other activities that will be happening during the course of the project.

An EDI file contains a structure known as enveloping.  Everything that is necessary for the file transmission and parsing, is part of or inside of the envelope.

The first segment in and EDI file is the ISA segment.  The very last segment in and EDI file is the IEA.  For those of you familiar with XML, you may be thinking of this as <File> and </File>.

This approach may make EDI seem familiar, but XML was not around when EDI was being created.  It is more like a Beginning Of File (BOF) and End Of File (EOF) marker.  However, there is no reason in EDI not to place multiple EDI envelopes in the same file. Read the rest of this entry »

Odd errors can occur when you get data that doesn’t fit the format, but matches close enough not to fail outright.  This type of error can be really hard to unravel. Preventing these messy errors, it is a good practice to implement a validation process before processing the data.  Some integration technologies come with validation, if yours doesn’t you should pre-process inbound data for validation.

In addition to this, pre validation can be used as a way to catch and handle other errors early.  Leveraging pre-processing with validation and error handling can give you a one stop place to catch, and report or correct systemic problems.

In the beginning we start with the data target.  This may be strange if you have not done any mapping, but the first, best thing that you can do to make a mapping project successful and fast is to start with a well defined target for your data.

I believe that Steven Covey says it this way, “Begin with the end in  mind.”  We do the same thing in data mapping, except that we begin with the end or target if you will.  The data target naturally leads us to the data sources that we need. Read the rest of this entry »

“Impossible!” You may say.  “All of the good web designers I have known are certifiable.”  Well this may be true, but you don’t have to go crazy just to modify a theme.  The basic plan is that we take all the css changes and we put them in a “child” css that imports the original.

Here is how that works.  The settings in the child over ride the original css.  Thus settings in the child CSS override the same element setting is the original CSS file.  And changes can be grouped logically for manipulation of like changes, or whatever makes sense to you. Read the rest of this entry »

What are Delimiters

In short, delimiters are characters that separate the elements of data so that one piece of data can be distinguished from another.  EDI files don’t have externally set delimiters.  This means in a pure sense, that an EDI parser may not know what the delimiters will be until it has begun to parse the file.  This may sound chaotic for someone familiar with strict delimited files.  But we need to remember that in and EDI file, the first segment is fixed position.  This is how EDI addresses the problem. Read the rest of this entry »

Regardless of the standards that you adopt for your integrations, you need to pick some.  EDI, XML, or any of the others.  You need to evaluate and decide on a standard that will do what you need.  And you need to be prepared to present it to your trading partners.

This also applies to other parts of your business.  Picking a standard platform for your development and standard tools for development.  And so forth.

Even small companies benefit from standardization.  Don’t be afraid to put your technology people in a room and ask them to provide standard recommendations.  But there are two cautions.

1.  The latest and greatest, may look cool to the tech people, but may also be a platform that is unproven and will change radically in a short time.

2.  Not all open source is good.  If you are going open source as part of your platform, look at the quality of the community that supports them.  (This is also true for non-open source technologies.)

Creating URLs that contain keywords help your site to be indexed by search engines.  A Keyword in a URL, combined with other factors helps a page be seen as relevant to that keyword in the search engine index.

Magento give us a handy way to control the URL for categories, pages, and items.  Sure, Magento will figure out a URL key to use if you don’t supply one.  But we should take a moment to think about what we are saying to the search engine about the page, category or item that we are creating.

Here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »

Beyond just compliance with the EDI standards, good form is using good practices in planing the format of your EDI.  Below are a set of rules or guidelines that will help you create EDI in good form.  Good form helps others to received your EDI and process it without encountering common exceptions.

Eliminate trailing delimiters.

When EDI was first created, modems were much slower, and high speed internet and Wi-Fi didn’t exist.  Moving large, verbose files over a network took time, and e-commerce solutions charged by the kilo-character.  This means that having unneeded characters cost money. Read the rest of this entry »

The accuracy of the time-line will only be as accurate as the accuracy of the least accurate task estimate.

The time estimate part of project planning is a tricky thing.  Generally there is some guessing involved.  To keep us from falling short a good practice is to pad estimates to account for the unforeseeable.  Project planners can’t just pad and pad.  There is pressure from the other side to keep your estimates accurate and keep your time-line short.  Time is money after all.

So how do we put enough time in the time-line to not fall short, and keep the time-line from getting too long and expensive?  Well that is a dance that takes some practice to learn.

Just remember, when you pad your estimate to your project leader or get and estimate from someone on your project, that padding is necessary, and you should discuss it openly.

Why are segments Important?

The segment is what makes an EDI file an EDI file.  They are at the very heart of EDI.  There are hundreds of different types of segments and each holds a different type of data.

N1^BT^Bill Gates^01^123456789~

For instance the ‘N1′ segments holds some common data that is used in many EDI documents.  First, the ‘N1′ type.  This is the name type.  The first elements following is the qualifier for the second field.  If this is were an invoice it might be the code ‘BT’ indicating that the value in the second field is the name of the “Bill To’ party, in this case ‘Bill Gates’.  Following the name is another qualifier that determines the type of the account number in the fourth filed.  In this case we will use the DUNS Number, and so on.  We stop now with the segment terminator to indicate to the parser that the next character will start a new segment. Read the rest of this entry »

You may have noticed this before, but in case you haven’t, many many many projects are not completed on their due date.

I know this is shocking, and if you are a new project manager, you may want to leave the blog now.  Continuing to read this article may result in the following.

1. Better understanding of the factors that should go into a project plan time-line.
2. More effective communication with the key players in your project.
3. Increased ability to accurately predict the completion time of a project.

If this frightens you…

Well at least you have been warned. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though 30% of searches are for local things.  Local businesses have a hard time getting found by keyword searches.  Sometimes this is because they don’t have a website.  But more often it is because Google, Bing, Yahoo or whatever, can’t tell if they are relevant for those search words.  So those local customers (customers that are geographically near a business with their product or service) are buying from someone in China or Toronto or some other place while the business in Peoria is wondering why know one ever comes in to buy.

As we customers do more and more of our initial shopping on the internet, businesses that don’t show up on a search are never visited.

My example: Read the rest of this entry »

“If you don’t have a website, you don’t have a business.”

Now let me explain this statement just a bit.  A business is a business when it starts to provide its goods and services to others.  In the past (distant past) people could and would “put out their shingle” to start serving their customers.  Times were simpler then.  And almost all markets were local.  At that time, the act of “putting out your shingle” was all you had to do to let your market know and you were in business.

In today’s market, a website is the modern day shingle.   Businesses aren’t really businesses if they don’t have a website.

But that is not all they need to do.

Some businesses are doing the equivalent to hanging their shingle out in the back yard or in back alleys where only people who know them will ever see it.  These are businesses that put up a website, but have used the wrong strategy, used the wrong keywords, and have no relationships with any other websites that can let search engines and people know where they are.

If you have a business, but aren’t getting visitors and customers from web traffic, you are probably doing something wrong.

Lets talk.  roy@theIntegrationEngineer.com

Or check out MarketMilestone.com to find out more.

If you are installing a Magento as a web store for yourself or for someone else, you will want to track how many visitors you have and how many of them convert into customers. Magento makes this really easy if you are using Google Analytic. Here is how it works.

First you will need to have a Google Analytics account.  If you don’t have one, you might want to check it out.  Its free and you can sign up at http://www.google.com/analytics

Read the rest of this entry »

Learn the basic tools.  Learn them first, and learn them well.  Sure, you can find some fancy XSLT tools or text editors.  And you can carry them around on a thumb drive and install them on all of you computers, workstations, laptops, and servers.  But sometime, some day, you will need to make a change, or fix a problem and you won’t have the fancy tool.  My experience says that this will also happen in the middle of the night when you are under pressure.  Knowing the basic tools like VI and Notepad, and any other tools that are a standard part of your systems will allow you to get your integration back up and running quickly and get you back to bed so you can go in and answer the questions about what happened with just that much more sleep.