Re: Processing EDI stream file from Medicaid?

On Wed, 2004-02-11 at 11:07, McIntyre Don wrote:
> Does anyone have experience in processing a Stream
> file without a line/carriage return on the iSeries?
> 
> This is an EDI type file from Medicaid.  It has the
> pipe bar(|) field seperator and a tilda ~ end of line
> indicator.
> 
> Would I need to process this via streaming text file
> using Java or can I do it via RPG or Cobol?
> 
> Thanks
> Don McIntyre
Don,

You can certainly do so with RPG -- have done it numerous times myself
over the years.  I recommend you upload the file to the IFS via FTP, and
then use the IFS api's to get at the data, and then parse away.

I've done mainly two ways -- the first, where the parsing program just
parses the data and writes it to external physical files for later
processing, and the second where the parsing program also processes the
data.  There are pluses and minuses to both approaches.

The Medicaid stream is probably ANSI X.12 format (remittances I'm
guessing), but IMO you can whip up your own stuff much easier than
trying to obtain an EDI translator.  Even if you use a translator, you
likely still have to massage the data to post it into your database.

Some of the hospital system vendors (like Siemens MS4, and I think First
Coast) already provide solutions for parsing and posting government EDI
files, so you might want to check into that before you (perhaps)
reinvent the wheel.


--
Regards,
Rich

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