The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

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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

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Starting off work on my On-line Status Repository, one of the things that I will be starting with is uploading and downloading SEF file from a data repository.  SEF stand for Standards Exchange Format.  SEF files are repositories of standards information that can then be exchanged between people and applications to define the format of EDI documents.

If you have used a standards editor, you probably know what an SEF file is, or have used it.  Some applications and EAI even use SEF files as part of their document creation and validation processes.  It becomes useful to describe briefly what SEF files look like, and what type of information they contain.

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When two trading partners agree to send each other electronic documents.  And they begin to describe what EDI documents they will exchange and how the documents will flow, they should also exchange EDI specification documents.  EDI usage or specification documents describe what fields and what segments a trading partner will send or expect to convey the information necessary to complete a transaction.  It doesn’t matter if we are ordering widgets, or invoicing, or transmitting catalog data, or checking insurance claims eligibility, the EDI needs to contain the data that the two parties need to communicate.  To explain this, and document it to that both trading partners know what is expected, we create an EDI usage specification.

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ACK is an Acknowledgment segment. It is commonly found on response transactions to Purchase Orders or 855. It is one of the lines found in the PO1 loop or group.  As this line modifies the PO1 line data from the Purchase Order, what it can contain and how that data is handled is important for the stability of the supply chain integration.  For clarity, we are going to use the 4010 x12 standard.

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Like the PO1 segment, IT1 is another line item segment used in the supply chain.  This is the line item segment found in invoices.  And since invoices make up an important part of a supply chain, I wanted to spend another article on this segment.  (IT1 is a group or loop so it is more than just a segment.)  In this article we will discuss what data is found on the IT1 segment, and how it should be handled on both inbound and outbound document.  For clarity, we are going to use the 4010 x12 standard.

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When we are dealing with supply chain or e-commerce related EDI, we probably will deal with line item data.  On a Purchase Order, (PO) or 850, the line item data is contained on the PO1 segment or the PO1 group.  (PO1 is a group or loop so it is more than just a segment.)  In this article we will discuss what data is found on the PO1 segment, and how it should be handled on both inbound and outbound document.  For clarity, we are going to use the 4010 x12 standard.  The PO1 hasn’t changed in content for a while, but it has gotten longer, (you will see how this works when we talk about the PO1 elements). (more…)

As someone that has been involved in the supply chain industry, this questions has come up more than once, and at more than one place of business. For both vendors and retailers, having access to better, broader and more accurate information is worth money.  And is sometimes the difference between life and death of a business in a competitive market.

When businesses realize that the catalog data that they have may be worth as much as the products or services that they sell, they may be tempted to sell that instead.  Before they do, they need to think about who owns the data.

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After you have created your usage specification, it can be useful to use a validation tool to check to verify that new trading partners comply during your boarding process. I have used Foresight’s EDI Analyzer for this many times, and it lets be quickly see where the EDI file departs from the specification.

There is a temptation to use this same validation in the production integration. But this would be a mistake. I’m not saying, “Don’t validate.” I highly encourage validation on both standard compliance and required data validation in mapping and integration. But to use the usage specification has a side effect that I witnessed once. (Only once.) (more…)

I have sitting on my desk, a very expensive book published by the ASC that contain the guidelines for the X12 3010 EDI standard.  I have rarely used them.  The EDI standards tool that I have used the most and can highly recommend is EDISIM from Foresight.  The last version that I used was version 5.0 and they are on version 6.8 as I write this post.  But for a long time, Foresight has nailed the conceptualization of working with EDI standards.

One of the things that in invaluable is the ability to share your standard documentation both internally and externally.  EDISIM is a tool that has allowed me to do that.  They produce a very professional looking document for external consumption and the standard is exportable so that everyone using EDISIM can share the same standards file in a format called SEF.

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In EDI there is a construct called a Loop.  But this is not like you think of a loop using an while  statement.  EDI is a file format, not a programming language.  When we speak of Loops in EDI, what we are really talking about is repeated structures, or segments.

EDI is not a flat file, but it does have repeated lines or segments.  Some times this repetition comes in groups and sometimes its just a line that get repeated in part of the document.  Repeating structured data is fundamental to EDI, but can become difficult to interpret at times.  Understanding the types of repeating structures and when and where they may occur can save a lot of time. (more…)

The 3rd layer of the EDI envelope is the ST segment.  The ST segment contains a Document Identifier, and a control number. The ST and its partner the SE segment define the beginning and ending of the Document.  The SE segment contains a counter of segments within the document, and the corresponding control number to the ST.  Relatively simple compared to the ISA and the GS. (more…)

EDI in its proper form is wrapped.  This means that there is nothing between the segment terminator and the beginning of the next segment.  Sometimes this is hard to read, for humans anyway.  And at those times people will unwrap the EDI so that it looks more like a flat file.  This is not hard to do, and is useful for debugging and trouble shooting processes.  A good parser or validator should be able to read either file. (more…)

What is an Element?

In the context of delimited data files, an element is the contents between two delimiters.  Like in a spreadsheet, the element is the contents of a cell.  In EDI, we have delimited segments, and just like a delimited file, the contents between the delimiters is the element.

So in this segment “PO1*1*8*EA*10**SW*H11510.REF*CT*089480-00-B-0336~”, the 5th element or PO1_04 is “10″, while the 6th element or PO1_05 is empty.

Empty elements are not necessarily null.  Calling something null when the data type is know like an empty element can cause some data theory debates.  I don’t want to start one here, but may write about that philosophical discussion at a later time.

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When EDI was born, (in the 1970s),  the committee did its best adopt a forward thinking plan and architecture.  But there was really no way for people living before the birth of e-mail to make place for what we use today to do business.  So the early versions of EDI had no place for e-mail addresses, and other things that we use in e-commerce today.

The goal of EDI was to provide a way to support communications between dissimilar computer systems.  EDI was intended as a light weight, reliable means to transmit data. (more…)

EDI is a standard, and having standards in e-commerce or any type of integration, is important in achieving success in your integration efforts.  I found this old video of Bill Gates talking about this very topic, and I decided to share it here. (more…)

What is the GS segment?

The GS segment is the second mandatory enveloping segment.  It shares some properties with the ISA segment.  There is a sender and receiver, version Identifier, time stamp and control number.  But one thing that the GS has that the ISA does not is a Functional Identifier.

That’s right, Functional.  This means that within the GS envelope are only EDI messages or documents that have the same function. (more…)

What is a flat file?

Files are called “Flat Files” when they contain a single data structure.  Generally this structure is the column and row structure like a spreadsheet or table, but a file in binary or encrypted with a single encryption key could also be called a flat file.  Files that are not flat; marked up files like XML or HTML, EDI files, other formats like HL7 or SEF files and others.  Here I am going to briefly discuss two flat file types; Delimited Files, and Fixed Width Files. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)