Download Tradacoms and EDIFACT

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'