EDI Formal formats

[bruce.gibbins]

Hi

I am not sure if you have considered this but I know I come across formal EDI formats (EDIFACT and X.12) quite a bit that have a pattern of delimiters that can be dynamic based on the content and the EDI Message type (ORDER, INVOICE etc).

Another option would be to possibly provide some type of TRANSFORMATION PLUGIN framework where interested third parties could build transformation login that could either be donated or sold as a plugin for these types of special file types.

Cheers

[dgudkov]

Noted about the EDI formats.

As for the transformation plugin framework – this suggestion totally makes sense and is inline with what we’ve been envisioning for EasyMorph in the future. Although, designing custom transformations is already possible! It can be done using Call and Input transformations (Input is only available in Professional edition).

Briefly speaking, Call can run (call) another project and return its resulting table. That other project can receive the input dataset (from the calling project) using the Input transformation. Once the input dataset is received it can be transformed using existing transformations in EasyMorph, or, alternatively, it can be saved into a file, then some other external application (e.g. a Python script or custom C++ application) can be executed in order to process the file and generate another (resulting) file, which then will be read back into EasyMorph and returned to Call transformation of the calling project. In this fashion, all the custom transformation logic is encapsulated in a reusable project and invoked using Call.

[bruce.gibbins]

Thanks, I thought this would be the approach I would need to take if needed.

The EDI FORMATS would be worth considering. The formats are generally straightforward but do offer trading partners some flexibility within those formats to have variations. So nested iterations within each row of the initial file would be required hence some complexities. But features such as your lookup transformation could possibly be incorporated to help with some of the other complexities in these layouts. Hence a specific transformation module would probably make things easier and less complicated.

Thanks again for the reply
Cheers

[dgudkov]

Here is an example of an EDI X12 file parsed in EasyMorph:

How to parse EDI file (e.g. X12 transaction set 837)

EDI files may look cryptic however it is possible to parse them in EasyMorph. Below is an (incomplete) example of parsing a sample ASC X12 transaction form 837 data file. An EDI file is effectively a text file that consists of records. Each record have a variable number of values separated by a delimiter. The first 1-2 values determine the record type which specified the information encoded in the rest of values in the record. N4*MIAMI*FL*33111~ For instance, in the record above there are 4 v…