RE: Help - EDI with small company

Eileen,

I have been working with EDI data for a long time now and as far as I see it you have to do one of the following:

1.) buy an EDI translator = expensive. But depending on future use is worth the price as you ramp up trading partners and documents.
2.) download a free software from softshare.com called EDInotepad, this will not really allow you to break the data up though. But you can visualize it in human readable format.
3.) write a program to "parse" the EDI data yourself. This is probably your best option but requires decent EDI knowledge. The envelope of EDI is a fixed field length record and must be used to get information that will allow your rpg to read the EDI data which is all variable field lengths with separators.

The process described in option 3 is something I have done and does work but as I said will require EDI knowledge. All of these are based on the documents being real Vics X12 EDI data. XML and / or CSV will likely be easier to deal with but will present their own issues. For example lack of standards which will likely mean every time you want to trade with a new partner you will need to go through a customization process.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

WEYCO Group -

Florsheim, Brass Boot, Nunn Bush, Stacy Adams

Duane Kehoe
EC / Programmer / Analyst


Phone # 414.908.1814
Fax # 414.908.1601
Email: dkehoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eileen Keck
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 10:27 AM
To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Help - EDI with small company

Hi
I am working with a small company that has to handle 850, 997 and 856
documents. We can retreive them in XML, CSV or EDI formats. I need to find a
very inexpensive(freeware) translator or be able to translate from the XML
or CSV to the i-series from a shared folder.
I can handle it once it is on the i-series or what ever you want to call it
these days:)

thanks,

Eileen Keck
BlueStar Systems