Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Tradacoms EDI Ecentre 2002-05-01 The Good & Bad News Good – both Tradacoms and EDIFACT share a common ancestry, and the syntax is very similar Good – Tradacoms is easy if you are familiar with EDIFACT Less good – there are differences in approach and usage Tradacoms and EDIFACT Both are tagged hierarchical structures using two levels of field delimiter! The normal segment, data, and sub-field separators are the same Interchange, functional group, message, segment and group concepts are the same Escape character usage is the same Service Segment Tags EDIFACT UNB UNG UNH UNT UNE UNZ UNA Tradacoms STX BAT MHD MTR EOB END SCH A Slight Difference Tradacoms uses ‘=‘ as a segment tag delimiter, EDIFACT uses the data element delimiter (normally ‘+’) MHD=1+ORDHDR:9‘ UNH+1+ORDERS:90:1:UN:GBTF00' Other Differences The Tradacoms compression rules are less rigorous Tradacoms always uses explicit nesting Tradacoms always uses implicit decimals Explicit Nesting EDIFACT uses tag sub-elements e.g. NAD:2:3:1+ … In Tradacoms the nesting counts are discrete data elements which are part of the segment definition e.g. DNC=2+1+1+ … (this is a DNC taken from INVOIC 9) If you are really on the ball this raises a question! (we will answer it later) Implicit Decimals The decimal separator is never used in Tradacoms All numeric data elements use an implicit decimal point This means that part of the definition of a numeric element is its fixed decimal precision Envelopes STX=ANA:1+5020901000003:SENDER+5013546110534:RECIPIE NT+010920:105537+00009+PASSWORD+APPREF‘ END+3’ UNB+UNOA:1+5019632071707+5026744999993+010830:1429+000 55+PASSWORD+APPREF++++1‘ UNZ+1+00055' Messages UNH+1234+ORDERS:90:1:UN:GBTF00' UNT+13+1234‘ MHD=2+ORDERS:8' MTR=7' Part Two The Bigger Picture How the Tradacoms syntax is used in practice EDIFACT is like Lego EDIFACT is a component system There are a limited number of data elements defined Some are also used to define composites Segments are made of data elements and composites Messages are built using these segments EDIFACT needs qualifiers Because of the general-purpose nature of its components EDIFACT needs to identify the context in which they are used. It uses data elements which describe the use made of other elements carrying ‘real’ data These are called qualifiers More about qualifiers EDIFACT has to use a lot of composites, since most data has to be explicitly identified Segments also need qualifiers to identify how they are being used EDIFACT has a lot of code lists containing the allowed values for qualifiers Verbosity is the price paid for flexibility Tradacoms is custom-built Tradacoms does not use a component approach Segments tend to be unique for each message Data elements tend to be used solely for one particular data item There is thus little need for qualifiers and code lists, and far fewer composites Any segment type occurs only once in a message definition An Example – Delivery Dates An EDIFACT earliest and latest date +64:020431:101+ +63:020502:101+ EDIFACT uses a C507 composite The same in Tradacoms +020431+ +020502+ Tradacoms uses the two distinct data elements EDAT & LDAT What is a Transaction? In EDIFACT a message is the unit of transaction In Tradacoms the unit is the ‘file’, which normally means the interchange! Tradacoms Transactions A Tradacoms file (interchange) contains at least 3 types of message A single Header Message One or more instances of the ‘real’ message A single Trailer Message Some Consequences … If a fault is found during the conversion of a Tradacoms message then the whole interchange should be aborted Application Reference is more important than for EDIFACT since it, rather than the message type, determines the routing of data to an application ORDERS ORDHDR ORDERS ORDTLR Tradacoms Transactions RSG INVOICE INVFIL INVOIC VATTLR INVTLR RSG Reconciliation Message STX=ANAA:1+5012345678902+5010000000008+950720:092439+2 08763+ +ORDHDR‘ MHD=4+RSGRSG:2‘ RSG=208763+5010000000008‘ MTR=3‘ END=4'