Kurt Smith, of Egghead.com, receives a Manufacturer Part Number in the
LIN segment of a 004010 832 Price Catalog transaction. The
Product/Service ID, D.E. 234, where the Manufacturer Part Number would
be placed, has a maximum length of 48 bytes. Kurt would like to have the
application allow for 48 but this may be a challenge. He asks "[Are
there] general or industry specific standard or does someone have
experience with the maximum I could expect?"
Dear Kurt:
As Doug Anderson, of Kleinschmidt Inc., pointed out, the maximum length
of the X12 Product/Service ID serves no real use as a guide to a
practical length for a Manufacturer Part Number. The Product/Service ID
element has to accommodate any number of different Product or Service
descriptions qualified by the Product/Service ID Qualifier in the
preceding D.E. 235 - including free text.
Erlend Nagel, of DHL, maintained that the roughly equivalent EDIFACT
D.E. 7140 (Item number) is only 35 characters. Erlend indignantly
maintains that "...if this is a workable limit internationally it would
be adequate to have this in your application as well." Doug, a patriot
who nonetheless has lost sight of the original question, rebuffed
Erlend: "...what may be valid in UN/EDIFACT may not be adequate for
users of other standards in other countries." Insisting on having the
last word, Doug continues "By the way, just to start a war, X12 is an
international standard, used cross many borders and in many other
countries other than the US." Yeah, Doug, like two - maybe?
But anyway, the only reason the Product/Service ID is longer than the
EDIFACT data element 7140 is 1) Americans have bigger egos and mouths,
and 2) EDIFACT used to have a design rule by which elements were quite
anally assigned lengths of either 17, 35 or 70 characters - see Message
Design Rules for EDI, TRADE/CEFACT/1999/3, at http://www.edifact-wg.org/
under "Documents."
Instead, I recommend that you take a look at the EAN/UCC-14 product ID
as a model. As a matter of fact, RosettaNet has adopted the EAN/UCC-14
product ID, otherwise known as a Global Trade Item Number or GTIN: "The
GTIN is the EAN/UCC system standard for product identification. It is
the most broadly implemented standard in the world. Globally, the pool
of numbers is extremely large and carefully managed. A GTIN is a
globally unique 14-digit number assigned to each packaging level of a
product or service...Company databases should reflect current internal
part numbers and GTINs as a 14-digit numbers." See RosettaNet's GTIN
FAQs at http://www.rosettanet.org/ - under Site Sections, see
"Standards," then under "Related Sections" see "Technical FAQs."
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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