Overview of EDI routing

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

  1. WebSphere Partner Gateway determines the protocol used by examining the first three characters of the document. Table 94 shows the document-type protocol associated with each code.
    Table 94. 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. WebSphere Partner Gateway extracts, from the EDI document, the sender information, based on the element and position for that particular document type, as described in Table 95.
    Table 95. EDI codes and the location of the sender and receiver information
    Code From Qualifier From ID To Qualifier To ID EDI component support notes
    ISA Element 105 at position 5 Element 107 at position 6 Element 105 at position 7 Element 106 at position 8 Supported
    GS N/A Element 142 at position 2 N/A Element 124 at position 3 "GS-only" addressing not supported
    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 Supported
    ICS Element X05 at position 4 Element X06 at position 5 Element X05 at position 6 Element X08 at position 7 Precursor to ISA - Not supported
    STX Element FROM1 at position 3 Element FROM2 at position 3 Element UNT1 at position 4 Element UNT2 at position 4 Not supported in this release
    BG N/A Element BG03 at position 3 N/A Element BG04 at position 4 Supported
  3. WebSphere Partner Gateway 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, WebSphere Partner Gateway uses only the ID.

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

Copyright IBM Corp. 2003, 2005