Overview of EDI routing

An EDI document contains information, within the document, about the sender and the recipient of the document. Business Integration Connect uses this information when it routes the EDI document. The general flow is as follows:

  1. Business Integration Connect determines the protocol used by examining the first three characters of the document. Table 113 shows the document-type protocol associated with each code.

    Table 113. EDI codes and associated document types and protocols

    Code Document type Document type protocol Outbound as Content Type:
    ISA X12 EDI-X12 application/EDI-X12
    GS X12 EDI-X12 application/EDI-X12
    UNB Edifact EDI-EDIFACT application/EDIFACT
    UNA Edifact EDI-EDIFACT application/EDIFACT
    ICS ICS EDI-X12 application/EDI-X12
    STX UNTDI EDI-Consent application/edi-consent
    BG UCS EDI-Consent application/edi-consent
  2. Business Integration Connect extracts, from the EDI document, the sender information, based on the element and position for that particular document type, as described in Table 114.

    Table 114. EDI codes and the location of the sender and receiver information

    Code From Qualifier From ID To Qualifier To ID
    ISA Element 105 at position 5 Element 107 at position 6 Element 105 at position 7 Element 106 at position 8
    GS N/A Element 142 at position 2 N/A Element 124 at position 3
    UNB UNA Sub-element 0007 at position 2 of composite element S002 at position 20 (2nd composite) of the UNB segment Sub-element 0004 at position 2 of composite element S002 at position 20 (2nd composite) of the UNB segment Sub-element 0007 at position 2 of composite element S003 at position 30 (3rd composite) of the UNB segment Sub-element 0010 at position 1 of composite element S003 at position 30 (3rd composite) of the UNB segment
    ICS Element X05 at position 4 Element X06 at position 5 Element X05 at position 6 Element X08 at position 7
    STX Element FROM1 at position 3 Element FROM2 at position 3 Element UNT1 at position 4 Element UNT2 at position 4
    BG N/A Element BG03 at position 3 N/A Element BG04 at position 4
    UCS N/A Element 142 at position 3 N/A Element 124 at position 4
  3. Business Integration Connect determines the sender ID from the sender ID and qualifier of the EDI document.

    Note that some EDI envelopes (for example, GS) do not have the notion of qualifiers. In this case, Business Integration Connect uses only the ID.

  4. Business Integration Connect concatenates the qualifier and ID with a dash (-) character to look up the sender ID from the Business Integration Connect profile repository. For example, if, in the EDI message for the sender, the qualifier is AB and the identifier is 1234567, Business Integration Connect expects to find a community participant with an identifier of AB-1234567 in the profile repository. If Business Integration Connect cannot find this ID, the EDI document is not routed.
  5. To look up the receiving partner, Business Integration Connect determines the receiver qualifier and ID from the EDI message.
  6. Business Integration Connect concatenates the qualifier and ID with a dash (-) character to look up the receiver ID in the profile repository.
  7. Business Integration Connect routes the document to the intended recipient.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2003, 2004