The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

Its time for another mapping exercise.  This time we will receive an EDI 832 in 4010 format, and map the data to a DB or flat file.  Getting catalog data into your procurement system is an important task.  And creating  variety of mapping exercises provides us with a better understanding of how mapping projects work than just having one that tries to be everything.  And mapping is one of the fun things that we get to do.  Following this exercise we will have worked through the the common issues and demonstrated how this process comes together.

Mapping Steps

There are five steps to this mapping process.  Here is a list with a brief description of each one;

• Defining the target:  This is the first step to mapping.  We must know where we are going if we plan on getting there.  And using a Target based mapping process we decrease the time and efort of the other steps.
• Defining the Data Source:  This is the second step to mapping.  Once we know what the target looks like, we know what data we need to complete it.  So this naturally leads us to defining the source(s) of the data.  This can be a single input data file or record, or it can be multiple types of data from multiple sources.
• Defining the Processes:  Some of the data that we will need in our target will not be in the proper form or format in the source.  We will have to have a process defined in our map to convert the source data into the correct form for the target format.
• Handling customisation Points:  When we are mapping data, we will see points where we will want to make a decision on what to do.  Not all data is created or received in an equal form.  Thus we may have points in our mapping process where we will need to do a different process depending on the source or content of the data.
• Monitoring the Process:  After we have created a mapping process we will need to monitor it so that we can know when something unexpected happens.  To do this we must identify the right places in the mapping process for it to report its status to a monitoring process.  This is the last step in the mapping process.

Catalog Target

If you have a catalog, then you will have your own schema.  We are getting our schema from a standard Open Office DB template.  This way you can create your own version for this exercise.

The Product table in the Open Office Business table has these fields:

• ID, INT
• CategoryID, INT
• Discontinued, BOOLEAN
• LeadTime, VARCHAR
• ProductID, INT
• ProductDescription, VARCHAR
• ProductName, VARCHAR
• ReorderLevel, INT
• Serialnumber, VARCHAR
• SupplierID, INT
• UnitPrice, DECIMAL
• UnitsInStock, INT
• UnitsOnOrder, INT

These are the basic fields that we will be inserting data into.  We will probably have a process that will validate the supplier ID before inserting new records, but that will come in during the process step.

Next Steps

Following defining our target, we will define our source.  But we will do that in the next instalment of this exercise.   Download and create start your paper map now, we will show them in the next post as well.

If you have just a few Trading Partners, having a unique and separate map for each of them might be a good option.  However, if you have plans to scale your integration to 10s, 20s, or 100s and 1000s of trading partners, having a one map to one trading partner strategy is a recipe for a difficult to maintain and support integration solution.  And it doesn’t have to be this way.  There are a few strategies that will help you create an integration that will scale and be easy to support.

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Continuing Mapping Exercise

Today we will identify our data source, and begin mapping the source data to the target data.  We identified our target format and placed that in the paper map last time.  If you didn’t read that post yet, you might want to review it quickly before continuing.  (read part One)

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This is a mapping exercise that will go through the process of creating a paper map, or mapping document.  We will start with an empty paper map that you can get here.  And we will end with a completed paper map document that documents what data from the source goes into what fields on the target.  This process will take more than one post, and I will link them together so that you can follow from one to the next.  Along the way, we will discuss the things that we are doing so that you can apply this technique in your mapping using the target and source in your own mapping tasks. (more…)

Introduction: This is a quick exercise to familiarize you with mapping from an EDI file to a Flat File.  If you are new to mapping, or want an idea of what mapping EDI will be like, this exercise should be a good place to start.  If you are familiar with mapping this should be a quick review with a few tips.  I use Target Based mapping.  Check out my post on Target Mapping here.  If EDI is unfamiliar and you need some basic information, my EDI primer is here.  If you are ready to map, and understand EDI basics, then lets get started.

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