I'm not sure I follow the discussion of transactions within groups within interchanges that's given in answer number 2. Because of my confusion, I offer this attempt at clarification.
The standards do not restrict the number of groups (GS/GE) within a single interchange (ISA/IEA). If I want one group within one interchange, that is acceptable. If I want a hundred groups within one interchange, that's okay, too. Similarly, If I want a single transaction set instance (ST/SE) within a functional group (GS/GE) that's fine. A hundred transaction sets within a single functional group instance is also okay with the caveat: All transaction sets within the functional group must have the same functional group identifier. Please note that not every functional group identifier is unique. For example, both the 875 and 876 use the functional group code "OG". Therefore, it would be possible to create a single functional group (GS/GE) that contains 875s and 876s. On the other hand, since 850 is the only transaction set that has the functional group code of "PO", any group (GS/GE) that specifies the functional group code "PO" can only contain 850s. Just to add to the confusion, there is no restriction as to the types or combinations of functional group codes at the GS/GE level with a single interchange. So, to summarize, interchanges may contain *one or more groups* and groups may contain *one or more transaction sets*. Your mileage and expectations may vary depending upon the translation software you use be it a commercial package, open source or home grown (but, in general, the greater the flexibility of the software the easier it is to add trading partners). As far as the concept of interchanges within a file is concerned, the standard has nothing to say. The concept of "file" is not always appropriate since certain communication protocols don't work on a file unit. I personally prefer to think in terms of a transmission stream which may be record based or file based. Of course, at that point we are delving further from the standards and deeper into implementations. Suffice to say, there are no limitations to the number of interchanges that can be sent per file or per transmission. Hoping that doesn't muddy the water more than it was intended to clarify... Best regards, Bill Chessman Inovis(tm) -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Samantha Scott Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 1:32 PM To: henkjanebbers Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [EDI-L] more questions about X12 (building open source x12 translator) 1. If you are using N2 as your format that is an implied decimal two positions to the left so 1.0 would look like "100" and .01 would look like "1". Only the trailing zeroes are significant. You may choose to pad that field's empty spaces with zeros or spaces as you like in your application layouts but EDI is all about using the smallest amount of data to communicate the information so you never pad your data on the EDI side*. *unless your customer doesn't know any better and wants it that when in which case you give them exactly what they want. 2. Yes you may have only one group per ISA. Our translator (GIS) always makes one group (GS-GE) per ISA no matter what. Even though the standard says there may be many, ASN's always go in one and FA's in another each with their own ISA. Most people using a real EDI translator will hardly even notice the difference as long as what you do follows the standards. Its perfectly legitimate to have one ST transaction inside one GS group inside one ISA envelope. However if you are sending me 500 invoices, for instance, I would greatly appreciate it if you would combine them all under one IN group and in one ISA otherwise you are giving me an excess number of files to archive. Its not functionally wrong but its annoying. It is also permissible to put many (properly formed) ISA's inside a single document that you send, again most real translators won't even notice because parsing data is what they are designed to do. That is what the batches from the VAN would look like back when we used to connect once an hour and pull a batch. The ISA changed slightly at version 4030 with the release character but that was just changing how a particular element was used, not the length. I haven't had to use much past version 4030 to notice other tweaks. If you changed the ISA length it would break the system. That ISA is the key to reading everything that follows it and so it must remain functionally the same regardless of the version used. On 9/19/07, henkjanebbers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > First, thanks for all of your answers. They were very helpful. > We have a working SEF to Bots-format converter. This save a lot of time, > our grammar for the x12 order (850)is over 13000 lines! > I can read and write x12 now, but have to improve some things. > > So my questions are: > > 1. If a field with format N2 contains only one digit, say '1', how do > I interpret this? As '0.01'? > > 2. In a functional group (GS-GE) I can expect more than one > Transaction Set type, as long as their Group Type is the same (is > first field in GS (GS01, Functional Identifier Code). OK, no problem. > But generating x12 is harder. Questions: > - what if I use only one Transaction Set type in a functional group > (GS-GE)? Does anybody bother? > - what if I always put only one envelope in a functional group > (GS-GE)? Does anybody care? > - Is it possible in an x12 file to have more than one ISA? > > 3. 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