*Introduction*
Currently more and more Lindt companies are on their way to integrate more tightly with their customers and suppliers by means of *EDI *(= Electronic Data Interchange).
EDI Ordering is the process where the customer sends its purchase orders e.g. as EDIFACT ORDERS messages. With respect to EDI Ordering we can distinguish between:
*Static *EDI Ordering: the customer does not get any response about the reception of the EDI order but only a functional acknowledgement from the receiving EDI system (in our system landscape we use ODEX Enterprise ) - *Dynamic *EDI Ordering: the customer does not only require to receive a *CONTRL *message as immediate response but, in addition, an *ORDRSP* message that must be sent within a defined time frame after having received the ORDERS message.
The *CONTRL *message is an Acknowlegement/Rejection Advice Message:"Based on the United Nations Electronic Data Interchange for Administration,<br />Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT) format, CONTRL is a message that<br />syntactically acknowledges or rejects an interchange.<br />Within the interchange it might also be used to notify the trading partners<br />of an acknowledgement or rejection of any of its functional groups or messages.<br />Explanations for the rejection are also clarified and communicated within the message."
The *ORDRSP *message is a Purchase order response message : "A message from the seller to the buyer,<br />responding to a purchase order message or a purchase order change request message."
Whereas the CONTRL message is still an acknowledgement on the functional (syntactical) level the ORDRSP message is a full-blown +business +response. At the beginning of the stylesheet I defined variables for the Message Function and the Response Type (see Business Rules section above).SummaryObviously it would have been possible to do the entire XSLT transformation ORDRSP IDoc -> ORDRSP EDIFACT within a single stylesheet. However, splitting the transformation into a pre-processing of the XML-IDoc and a main processing (XML-IDoc -> XML-EDI) clearly reduced the complexity of the stylesheet. In addition, the stylesheets are easier to read and understand which facilitates maintenance in case of new or changed business rules (or modified IDoc contents) in the future.
*Conclusion </p><p>One of the fundamental principles of Systems Engineering is to split a large project into smaller ones in order to reduce complexity and increase manageability. The same principle can be applied to complex XSLT transformations required for EDI.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Further Readings*For more details about the EDIFACT message types you may refer to:
Syntax and service report message for batch EDI (message type-CONTRL)[UN/EDIFACT ORDRSP | http://www.unece.org/trade/untdid/d01b/trmd/ordrsp_c.htm]
[Edifactory: ORDRSP | http://www.edifactory.de/msginfo.php?s=D01A&m=ORDRSP]
