Overview
EDI systems typically and historically work on batch documents. You can use the Module for EDI with Trading Networks to batch EDI documents for delivery rather than delivering EDI documents to the systems in real time as the documents are received.
Batching offers a more flexible and affordable approach to EDI document exchange and provides the following benefits:
Enables documents to be grouped and sent at scheduled times that are more appropriate to organizational requirements.
Increases system performance, requiring fewer communication connections and less time spent on authenticating envelopes that are sent individually.
Makes working with legacy systems easier because legacy systems are batch-oriented.
To batch the documents, Module for EDI provides the wm.b2b.editn.batch:batchProcess service. When you install the module, this service is registered as a Trading Networks delivery service and assigned the name EDI Batch in Trading Networks. The batchProcess service combines EDI documents into a single document and adds group-level and interchange-level headers and trailers to the document.
To use the batchProcess service, you define public scheduled delivery queues in Trading Networks. When you define a queue, you associate the queue with the batchProcess service and specify a schedule for when Trading Networks is to invoke the batchProcess service to act on the documents in the queue.
To get the EDI documents into the queue so that they can be batched into a batch EDI document, you define a Trading Networks processing rule that uses the Deliver Document By processing action. When you set the Deliver Document By processing action, you use Scheduled Delivery and identify the name of the queue that uses the batchProcess delivery service. When the schedule that you associated with the queue indicates, Trading Networks invokes the batchProcess service to combine the EDI documents in the queue into a batch EDI document.
Note:
VDA documents cannot be batched.
The batchProcess service uses its input variables and information in EDITPAs when creating the combined EDI document. You can set the input variables and EDITPA variables to:
Control the creation of the UNA segment for UN/EDIFACT interchanges (or the BAT segment for TRADACOMS transmissions) for the batch process.
Set default interchange or TRADACOMS transmission header values.
When batching EDI documents that were placed in the queue, Module for EDI can batch the documents into one of the following:
A single output batch EDI document with multiple interchange or TRADACOMS transmission envelopes.
Multiple output batch EDI documents, each containing only a single interchange or TRADACOMS transmission envelope.
For more information about how
Module for EDI creates the output batch EDI document, see
Creating the Batched EDI Documents.
For more information about how to set up EDI batching, see webMethods Module for EDI Installation and User’s Guide.