A good basic description. Putting on my Canadian hat, however, I'd point out that X12 is a North American standard as it is also the most widely used standard in Canada and has been for decades. At least as far as EDI is concerned, Canada and the US are a single territory.
And as for EDIFACT, it's a United Nations standard and widely used beyond Europe, including by the US government, in such departments as Homeland Security, the global auto industry, which has committed to eventually moving entirely to EDIFACT, and in Asia, where a number of very large projects have been recently completed and are underway, including India's harbors. However you cut it, it's difficult to sum everything up in a few words or a few paragraphs. It's not rocket science but there's no denying that there is a learning curve to mapping or any other skill required to do EDI. My advice to Dinakar would be to begin by reading . search the web . there's a ton of stuff out there that'll give him a good introduction to EDI and what he needs to know to succeed. His question really should have been . I want to learn. Can you recommend sites, articles, books, anything that'll help me help myself get started. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Art Douglas Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 8:51 AM To: 'DINAKAR'; [email protected] Subject: RE: [EDI-L] EDI mapping basics Dinakar, While Smanatha's response is technically correct, it may be a little more terse than you desired. Mapping EDI is not all that much different than mapping terrain - or rather using a map to go from where you are to where you wish to be. There are generally two kinds of EDI maps: inbound and outbound. The inbound map is used to take information sent to you by another entity (we call other entities "Trading Partners"), and transform it in to a form useable by your organization. The outbound map takes information generated by your organization and formats it for your Trading Partner. The formats most often used are X12 in the USA, and variations of EDIFACT in Europe. Both X12 and EDIFACT, as well as other standard formats are used outside and across the named regions as well. Another format some people class with EDI is XML. XML is quite useful, especially if you are selling a product designed to use it. In the EDI community we are often reserved in our enthusiasm of XML, for reasons you don't need to know in a "Basic" discussion. Each standard has various versions, older, newer and newest. The standards undergo change, and each batch of changes warrant a new version. Before you create a map, you must establish between you and your trading partner, which standard and version you will use. Then you must establish the document, aka Transaction Set. For example, if you are mapping for a manufacturer, and your trading partner is a wholesale distribution company, and your client of employer is in the U.S., you may wish to use the X12 850 Purchase order, or the 875 Grocery Purchase Order. Or you may select the EDIFACT ORDERS transaction set. I'm going to continue this discussion assuming you have selected the 850. Next, you must determine where you wish to go - the target of the EDI map, if you will. What information do you want. Let's say your client or employer is using Oracle EBS. In all likelihood, you will want to map to the POI file, which Oracle's EC Gateway will suck in and make into a Sales Order. (Assuming the data is correct, your map is correct, and the setup is correct in Oracle,) You must determine what data your Trading Partner (TP) is sending in the 850, and if it is adequate. If not, you will have to negotiate with your TP, or your Oracle developers to fill in the gaps. Once all that is done, comes the simple part - building the map. From here, you use the tool provided to build a set of instructions that will transform the inbound data into the outbound data. Next comes testing of the map, doing the Oracle setup for the Trading Partner/Customer and testing of the results in a test Oracle instance. Once you and your internal customer (customer service?) are happy with the results, you move or replicate the Oracle setup to production, redirect your map's output to production, notify your TP that you are in production. If you use SAP, JDE, PeopleSoft or any of hundreds of others of back-end systems, the steps are similar. Somewhere along the line you should have also tested the 997 acknowledgement which tells your TP that you have received his EDI transactions, and that they did or did not pass a syntax test. Now, you sit back and monitor the results, making corrections as necessary. Good luck, Art EDI Guy From: [email protected] <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> ] On Behalf Of DINAKAR Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 7:22 AM To: [email protected] <mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com> Subject: [EDI-L] EDI mapping basics Hi, Kindly someone post the basics of mapping. I am a starter. -- WITH WARM REGARDS! 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