This link is to a whitepaper that microsoft published overviewing EDI
capabilities with BizTalk Server. It also does a very good job listing the
EDI limitations within the product and some of the possible workarounds.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?URL=/library/techart/EDIandBTS
.htm
I am sure Microsoft will address these issues in their future releases, but
for now there are some resource intensive workarounds.
Regards,
Peter Rodenhauser
IEC Technologies
E-Business Consultants
(440) 331-7751 Tel
(440) 331-0960 Fax
-----Original Message-----
From: Electronic Data Interchange Issues
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Beecher, Anthony
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 11:45 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: "Biztalk...I choose you"
I worked with the package (in the context of XML) while at buy.com. Here is
is what I noticed relevant to X12 though:
The EDI support looked pretty good. They didn't have %100 of the standards
available at that time, but had the most popular documents. You could spec
out documents that weren't included.
I believe it did validation of the inbound EDI.
I believe it did 997 automatically.
It had a web based report facility. It seemed like you could set up your own
reports. i.e pluck fields from the documents as they flowed through and use
these to create your own tracking reports. Very cool.
The out of box communications were not extremely robust i.e. no FTP
scripting that I noticed. Heck, Microsoft hasn't yet produced an FTP server
daemon that is reliable (IIS 5 FTP still has a file locking bug!) In the
real word you need some hellish flexability on your communications side.
Just dump the files out and have a separate com system. I prefer to keep
communications discreet anyway, for reliability.
In a typical Microsoft fashion, they have renamed everything to make it look
revolutionary. Jumpstart:
Port = file polling
Channel = transformation
They have the whole Visio integration, which I wasn't sure I wanted to
hassle with in the context of a simple X12 subsystem. I believe it would
become necessary in designing your reports though.
I was amazed at how little the assigned MS consultants knew about the
product, but this shouldn't detract from the product. It was too new and
changing to rapidly to have that much experience with it. The thing has
come a long way in the past couple of years. But don't expect it not to
change. Another pitfall, is that I wasted alot of time trying to get it to
work through Terminal Services. In the end we decided that it only worked
when setting at the server machine itself.
For a small business I agree that, at the moment, Software is going to be a
better "out of box" experience. It is very inexpensive the last time I
looked, too. Biztalk is too open to be extremely friendly. However, MS could
eventually repackage it to be moreso. And anyway, the future of small
business software is .net where MS hosts the backend and does the TP
integration for them. Why do you think they bought Great Plains?
Anthony Beecher
roving EDI specialist
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Rawlins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 11:19 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: "Biztalk...I choose you"
Thanks to Dan Tharp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for sharing his evaluation with
us. I wonder if you might share a few other pieces of information to
help others learn from you experience.
You mention cost, "ease of use", and "intuitiveness" as factors which
influenced your decision. Also, you mentioned as a negative that
BizTalk was very developer oriented and you would not recommend it for
someone looking for an "out of the box" EDI solution. However, you felt
that you and your staff were able to deal with it. Were there other
significant factors that led to your decision, and if so, what were
they?
I haven't yet done the download and evaluation of BizTalk server
(another thing on my overcrowded "to do" list), and was wondering about
the level of EDI support in BizTalk.
Does it come with the EDI standard definitions (X12, EDIFACT, etc.) for
validation, or do you have to create your own templates for validation?
[I assume it does validation of EDI documents!]
Does it automatically create and reconcile functional acknowledgments
(X12 997 or EDIFACT CONTRL), or do you have to create your own?
Does it easily allow tracking by X12 or EDIFACT interchange control
numbers (by viewing an interchange history in a browser), or do you have
to open the individual documents to retrieve the numbers?
Thanks,
--
Michael C. Rawlins, Rawlins EC Consulting
http://www.metronet.com/~rawlins/
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