EDI Transmissions

[spacepro]

Hi All,

Just wondered if anyone has any experience of data being transmitted via EDI(electronic Data Interchange). I am wondering what sort of format it generally is transmitted in and it is something that is up and coming and I will need to amend the data import facility of my db if the format is difficult.

Anyone have any experience with Access and EDI?

Andy

 

[Pat Hartman]

It has been quite a while but I think the import feature of Access will have trouble with an EDI file because I believe the EDI file contains header, detail, and trailer record formats and the standard TransferText file must contain only a single record type. Importing the file via VBA would be easy enough though. EDI formats vary depending on what transaction you are sending/receiving but they are well documented. There are a large number of well documented standard formats.

 

[spacepro]

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the reply. I currently use the transferspreadsheet command in vba to import the current excel spreadsheets, but the customer is talking about transmitting via EDI. We are setting up a project team, as this is new to us but I was just curious in what sort of format generally it is in e.g. xml, delimited etc etc. and if I can get my hands on any sort of documentation relating to EDI (how it works basically).

The transmission will interface with SAP and ideally the Access db.

Anyway thanks for your valuable time.

Andy

 

[GSM]

I'm using MS Access as a holding area for our EDI files - The problem I encountered is the file format. When some customers talk about EDI they don't necessarily mean EDI in the truest sense!!

We receive data from four or five different trading platforms which mean we get a mix of tab delimited files with the EDI mailbox header and also the industry standard EDI files which require a tablemap to translate the data before you can even read it!

I guess it is really down to what you intend using EDI for and who are your trading partners. I would recommend enforcing some data standards and stand firm on this.

I would seriously look at some of the 3rd party software solutions that are available. Have a look at http://www.gxs.com or even MS Biztalk

Get the business requirements firmed up and then look at the technical solution to support it.

 

[spacepro]

Thanks for the info Pat and GSM.

Andy