Thanks to everyone for your stupid EDI stories. Please keep them
coming. If you prefer, please send them to me privately and I will
eventually get around to compiling the best of them. So far, the most
outrageous contribution:
There's a large retailer that insists on having one 810 and
sending one 850 for every carton of goods! The supplier
receives 70,000 separate 850s each with 1 line item all in
one GS/GE in one ISA/IEA and they have to send back 70,000
810s. The retailer graciously allows them to split this over
several transmissions.
I've also gotten hilarious stories along the lines of:
We had received a request from a customer to implement EDI,
and I was circulating the customer's questionnaire among
several individuals in our company who needed to provide
the answers. Our IS communications manager called me,
commenting how strange he thought it was that our customer
would care what kind of VAN our company drove.
It's a judgement call, but I'd have to lump this into "Stupid *Manager*
Stories," an entirely different genre.
Thanks to Anthony Beecher who answered my question "Does anyone really
think that XML will solve these [sorts] of problems?" - "XML will make
it easier for small businesses to create these kinds of problems."
And as far as real EDI questions go, Steve X Lee, of AEI Logistics,
asked:
While we're at it, why do some people [specify] ISA Version
2000 with a GS Version 4010? [Is it because] only some Docs
are being updated from 2000 to 4010 and there could be a mix
of 4010 and 2000 GS's in one ISA? Which would lead to the
next question: would a 4010 ISA and 2000 GS be invalid?
No - you can mix a X12 004010 Interchange (ISA) with an old 002000
Functional group (GS). For most purposes, it matters little if 00200
or
00304 or 00401 are stuffed in the ISA: the structure of ISA and IEA
have little changed since the late 80's. But technically speaking, if
you use any of the newer code values for the coded data elements in the
ISA, then ISA12 must reflect an X12 Version-Release which supported
those code values. For example, if you identify the sender and receiver
by DUNS, i.e., Code Value 01, Element I05, ISA05 - "Duns (Dun &
Bradstreet)", any ISA12 code back to Version 2 (00200) will be valid.
But if you're in Education, and are using a newer code, such as 25 -
meaning "American College Testing Program 4-Digit Code of Postsecondary
Institutions, or ACT" - the ISA12 field should have at least 00304 in
it, because that code made its first appearance in X12 Release 003040.
The various changes to the structure of the ISA included, in 004020
(October 1998), the replacement of ISA11 D.E. I10 Interchange Control
Standards Identifier by D.E I65 Repetition Separator (both were exactly
one character in length). Before 004020 (i.e., when something less than
"00402" is specified in ISA12 D.E. I11 Interchange Control Version
Number), ISA11 will be a single character code value "U" meaning "U.S.
EDI Community of ASC X12, TDCC, and UCS". Maybe they figured that the
ISA and IEA would eventually envelope EDIFACT or something besides X12
transaction sets and wanted to be able to differentiate them in the
interchange header. But as time went on it was clear that this field
was always a constant "U" and could be yielded when something else was
needed.
Since EDIFACT had repeating data elements, X12 just had to have them
also! So in 004020, ISA11 became the placeholder for the single
character Repetition Separator; the ISA has always had provision for a
composite data element separator in ISA16 D.E. I15 Component Element
Separator long before there were any composite data elements, first
introduced in 003030. If you send any transaction set which uses
segments with repeating data elements, you will have to use an ISA with
"00402" or newer in ISA12 D.E. I11 Interchange Control Version Number.
William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
4950 Blazer Memorial Pkwy.
Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600
Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
"Commerce for a New World"
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