RE: EDI at midrange sites - Off Topic??

Ed:
I have seen this a million time, 40K for the software alone.  I many
instances, if the client is adamant that they want an all AS400 solution, we
recommend they buy a very small AS400 (in the P05 tier) and buy the 8K
version of the EDI software.  They cost of the new box and software is much
cheaper than the EDI software for their P30/40/50 box.  In other instances,
a PC front EDI works very well.  Someone made the comment that this was a
pain back in '94, before PC/iSeries comms were very robust (PC Support....
yuck), but now we can make these integrations bullet proof.  Of course you
could always use an outside service (like ours) and let them do all the "EDI
stuff" and just pass a proprietary flat file.
cjg


Carl J. Galgano
EDI Consulting Services, Inc.
550 Kennesaw Avenue, Suite 800
Marietta, GA  30060
(770) 422-2995 - voice
(419) 730-8212 - fax
mailto:cgalgano@ediconsulting.com
http://www.ediconsulting.com
AS400 EDI, Networking, E-Commerce and Communications Consulting and
Implementation
http://www.icecreamovernight.com
Premium Ice Cream Brands shipped Overnight
FREE AS/400 Timesharing Service -
http://www.ediconsulting.com/timeshare.html
"You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know" - rw

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Ed Chabot
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 3:02 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: EDI at midrange sites - Off Topic??


Scott,
I agree with the print and re-key argument, it's just that we only have 2
trading partners now and three more just requesting that we do EDI so it's
hard for us to justify the $40K and yearly maintenance of any of the AS/400
based packages.  We were/are doing some of the file transfer and
import/export type stuff but there is always a need for I.S.involvment
either at the programmer or at the operator level and I am trying to get
away from that.  I don't know if that is realistic but that is what I am
hoping for.

Ed Chabot
The Marlin Firearms Company
100 Kenna Drive
North Haven, CT 06473
(203)985-3254

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 2:39 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange. com
Subject: Re: EDI at midrange sites - Off Topic??



On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Ed Chabot wrote:

> I hope that this isn't too far off topic.  I was curious about how other
> AS/400 sites are conducting EDI.  Specifically, on a PC or AS/400, what
> packages are being used, how many trading partners are involved,
interfaced
> to AS/400 systems or print and re-key, etc.
>

This is completely on-topic, isn't it?

We used to do EDI with a PC program.  We'd create files on the AS/400
containing the data we wanted to send, and download them to a PC, and
have the PC transform the file into EDI format and send it.  For incoming
files we'd reverse the process... the EDI software would write it to a
PC file, and we'd upload that and a program would run that would insert
the data into our applications.

The problem with this method is that it was very error prone, and required
quite a bit of manual work.  (With todays networking tools it could be
made somewhat less painful, however this was back in 1994)

Currently, we instead use Trustedlink EDI/400 by Peregrine (originally it
was Premenos, then it was bought by Harbinger, and then bought again by
Peregrine) which runs on the 400 itself.

We have things integrated into the EDI software to the point where no user
intervention is required at all, except when adding new trading partners.

When this software was owned by Premenos, it was a rock-solid product with
wonderful tech support.   Peregrine's tech support isn't as good, and
their software is a lot more buggy...  but it'd be a lot of work for us to
change it at this point, so we're sticking with it.

We have about 50 trading partners.  Nothing is print & re-key (since,
IMHO, that would completely defeat the point of using EDI)

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