Jonathan,
Now I understand where you are coming from. I have worked with or for three
U.S. EDI software providers and am well aware of their level of knowledge of
actual business practices. I suspect U.S. VANs are not much different. The
people at these these companies who know best are actually the field
consultants who are not commonly called in to help spec products or sit on
standards committees. What practices are in the U.K. I cannot say. I just
finished a one year stint with a very large British consulting firm and they
had no in-house knowledge whatsoever of ANSI X12.
Of course, VANs & software providers will offer additional services. That's
how they make their living. The comment I was interested in was the 90%
one which I suspect is far from actual usage. As I've said I have
experience with dozens & dozens of major U.S. EDI users and none use the IGs
when exchanging 997s. As you point out all S/W providers have the
capability of using("loading") IGs but in practice I suspect few substitute
these for the standards when generating the 997s. They may be used in the
application map where they still would have value added as they eliminate
the need for map rules to support the IG. I'm still waiting for someone to
reference a major EDI user where an IG is used to generate a 997.
As I pointed out earlier there are three levels of acknowledgment. Using
the 997 as you describe is fine but it would only cover two levels. The 824
may still be necessary to handle the third.
I suspect a big reason for the divergence in our experience is that the
organizations that have been doing EDI for 10-20 years are still doing it
they way always have. Newer implementors may be looking at better ways of
conducting business than were thought of years ago.
Regards, Jim Divoky
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Allen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Jim Divoky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 8:31 AM
Subject: Re: Re: FW: Dual 997's
> Jim Divoky asked:
> >
> > >> We all know in practice that the 997 is used in this way 90% of the
time.
> > (This is referring to the practice of using 997s to report
non-compliance
> > with an IG.)
> >
> > Can someone cite some major companies that [use 997s to report against
> > an IG]? Maybe my experience is biased but in working with dozens of
> > multibillion dollar organizations in manufacturing, retail, utilities,
> > automotive, and state government, I do not recall a single instance
> > where this is done.
>
> I work in X12C, which is where all the VAN and translator companies tend
> to congregate, and while we have been discussing the 997/824 changes,
every
> single vendor around the table all said that their products do this, that
> they provide value-add services on that basis and that a bare 997 against
> only the standard wasn't useful to anyone. The only exceptions were one
> or two of the older MS-DOS-based translators who only had the room to load
> the standards tables; every other translator loaded IGs. Harbinger, for
> example, sell sets of trading-partner enabled tables for their translator
> and when you want to start trading with this partner or that partner you
> ring up and they send you (for a fee, of course) the IG tables for that
> trading partner and the hook into the ISA/GS switching table.
>
> Our own VAN software (just been certified for the DEBX network) loads each
> IG as the transaction comes through and validates all data against the IG
> before delivery to a client's mailbox. We switch at the end of the ST
> segment so as to fully implement ST03 where supplied, and have trading
> partner tables that allow us to pick out the right IG based on
transaction,
> version, release, GS08 extension, GS02 or other criteria. That allows us
> to detect unregistered or invalid transactions that clients shouldn't be
> sending or can't receive. It also allows us to handle TS102 in with any
> other transactions in a functional group or handle different IGs for
> each transaction in an FG.
>
> Jonathan
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
> Jonathan Allen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Voice:
01404-823670
> Barum Computer Consultants | | Fax:
01404-823671
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>
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