Found this interesting article Integrating BI Software about Integrating BI tools. Clearly a BI tool is of no use, unless it can read or parse data from a variety of different data formats including EDI, XML, CSV and so on.
Trading partner integration is traditionally considered one of the most time consuming tasks in the IT industry. One of the most common questions I have been asked is “How many days will take it to integrate one document type from a partner?”
Unfortunately the answer is it depends. There are several factors that go into the total time frame. Lets break down the task into smaller tasks. The tasks are:
Wherever human intervention is required, expect delays. It is not surprising that companies spend an enormous time on this activity, there are time and cost overruns and depending on the complexity, this entire process takes months.
Can we onboard 15 Trading partners in 30 days? This is an enormous task, and we are going to blog each step in this process, so we can identify why this process takes time and what can be done to simplify this process. Watch this space….
What exactly is Cloud computing? Will everything move to the cloud? Will banks ever use the the cloud? What is the difference between ASP, SAAS and cloud? These are some frequent questions that I often encounter. Wikipedia has its own definition of cloud computing .
So what exactly is cloud computing? I would define cloud computing as “The ability to add hardware(virtual)+ software on demand”.
In any of the programming languages (C, Java, C#, PHP, javascript), one of the basic operators is the “new” operator. Using the “new” operator a programmer can allocate memory to hold data. Imagine, the ability to create a new server using a programming language. In most hosting environments, when you order a dedicated server of a certain configuration(8GB RAM, 150GB harddisk etc),your order is taken, someone sets up a physical server for you and the entire process may take anything from a few hours to a few days.
In the cloud, creating a new virtual server is similar to creating a new variable in a programming language. It is now possible to programmatically create a new server, install the required software etc. Or better still, it is possible to create an image of an existing server with all required software and then create a new server from the image. Imagine creating an image of your desktop PC and copying the image to a new laptop and getting all your software and data in 1 click?
So what is EDI Cloud computing? The ability to create a new FTP server or a new AS2 server based on demand and the ability to create a new instance of a translation engine on demand. This way, as your trading partners increase or the load for a partical partner increases, you do not have to install/monitor new hardware/software.
In the past, there have been instances of companies investing several million dollars to create a load balanced, scalable B2B environment. Now with cloud computing, it is possible to create a virtual, load balanced, auto scalable, multi-region, replicated B2B environment at a fraction of that cost, and that is what Mond cloud is all about.
2010 has been an exciting year at CGOne. After several years of working behind the scenes with companies like HP, Accenture, GXS, we finally launched our EDI cloud offering this year. Experience shows that December is usually the month with maximum EDI traffic, and this was the case with Mond EDI cloud as well. More than 48,000 documents per partner where exchanged in this month alone and we are proud that the entire process has been extremely smooth, with no production issues.
In 2011, we plan to add several more trading partners to the Mond cloud, expanding our repository to include several leading companies in CPG, Automobile, Retail etc.
We achieved a positive financial result this year. This will help us further improve the product and taking into account all the innovative ideas and feedback of our customers. We are investing into our employees and are happy to welcome new team members every month.
We look forward to an exciting 2011. In January we will launch our new partner program. We plan to expand our partner consulting companies and system integrators.
The focus on 2011 is to reduce integration costs and time frames, making it easily manageable and affordable for all.
Happy new year
This is not an exhaustive checklist, but covers some of the not so obvious stuff.
1) A visual inspection of the output X12 document is not enough.
2) Open the EDI output in any editor that can show hex values. If your trading partner expects 0x0A (Linefeed LF), then look for 0a. Ensure that you don’t see 0d in the output)
3) If your trading partner expects CR(Carriage return) followed by LF(Line Feed), then look for 0d followed by 0a.
4) Ensure that the last row (IEA segment) is followed by a segment terminator. (Easy to spot if the segment terminator is ‘~’ or ‘^’, needs more effort if the segment terminator is CR or LF)
5) Some parsers can parse the document even if last segment terminator is not there, but some can’t.
6) If you are posting the document to an FTP server, use a host name instead of the IP address. IP addresses can change, host names will change less frequently.
7) Get the correct directory to which you have to post the files. Use the proper path separator.
8 ) Some partners expect the filename to have your ID, document standard and current time. Get the exact specifications, else the file may be posted, but may not be picked by the recipient.
9) Some EDI Parsers can’t parse the document if it contains an Ampersand (&). Check with your trading partner and replace with space if required.
10) Sometimes the EDI parser can handle the ampersand, but when the partner creates an XML document from the EDI/X12 document, the ampersand may not be properly escaped in the XML, causing further problems.
11) Ensure data is rounded as documented in the SEF. If the SEF says a field is of type N0, ensure that there are no decimal places (ex: 49 instead of 49.0).
12) Ensure there are no blank lines in X12 documents. Sometimes an address might have a new line character. If it is mapped to the output without checks, the generated X12 document will not be parsed by your trading partner.
In my previous blog entry I discussed some of the frequent points of failure in a B2B transaction. Let me explain how the Mond Cloudware framework can address these challenges. Let’s consider implementing a simple FTP client that can connect to an external FTP server or an EDI VAN, get the list of X12 documents, read each file, delete a file and write a file to the FTP server. Using existing API’s a programmer (in any language) could probably implement these in a few hours. Now add ‘Industrial Strength’ error handling including document storage else where in case of errors, retry mechanism , meaningful email notification, file name generation and quickly the few hours turn into a few days of development and few additional days of testing.
A functional analysts/programmer can handle each of the above tasks using Mond Cloudware. The typical tasks include:
1) Define a FTP/SFTP/FTPS channel. Define the usual parameters like host/userid/password/directory etc.
2) Define the retry count , interval and factor, the email channel to be used etc.
Using the Mond Script Engine, when you invoke an FTP operator like Get List Of Files, or Put File, Mond automatically retries the FTP operation in case of an error. Each successive iteration takes a progressively longer time, because it makes no sense to keep retrying say every 1 minute. If at the end, the operation is still not successful, the email channel is used to notify the relevant users about the error. The inbound document can be stored in the Mond Datastore, along with a set of unique attributes to identify this document later on.
Every operation is also automatically logged, so you know what went all, how many files were found on the FTP server, how many were read, how many processed, how many deleted, without writing a single line of code. An added bonus is that you get the metrics like time taken for each operation. This way, you also get to monitor the response time without additional coding.
The pseudo code for such an operation could be :
Get File Count Using FTP Chanel
Loop Over File Count
Read next file using FTP Channel
If FTP Response OK
Store Document
Else
Send Email
Delete File
End Loop
An actual Mond project code is shown below:
Mond FTP:
A lot actually. In my 10 years experience talking to customers about B2B, one of the most frequent complaints I have heard is about missed documents. A buyer/supplier sends an EDI/X12 document and the other party never receives it. Worse still they have no idea that a document was sent, but not received. After several days, phone calls, these missed documents are traced, resent resulting in a huge cost. You might think this probably happens only with smaller/mid sized companies. Unfortunately even the largest companies face this issue frequently. To find out why this happens, let’s look at the possible points of failure in a typical B2B transaction:
Unless each of these cases is handled appropriately, one in a few hundred B2B transactions is bound to fail. Moreover the actual implementation of each scenario depends on the design, budget and time allotted to a project and is bound to vary from project to project. Handling all the above scenarios by custom coding can improve the B2B reliability, but will increase the overall implementation cost. What is needed is a reusable B2B framework that handles these scenarios and can be configured for each customer. In the coming days, we will explore each of these topics in depth to see how the Mond framework handles these cases and how it can be configured for your special case.
Welcome to the CG1 Marconn and Mond Blog, dedicated to providing you timely and useful information on B2B.Our goal is to help you exchange B2B documents with more partners, in a shorter timeframe, at a lower cost, and with a higher quality. Never loose a B2B document !!
