What is the use of EDI - Gentran?

What is called mapping in Gentran?

2

Best Answer


EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange and is a generic term to describe the transmission of certain structured data between organizations.

Gentran is an EDI tool that can parse and convert data from one format to another (such as XML, AS2, or X12). It has a Business Process Modeling Language component where drag & drop programming can take place.

Mapping is a generic term that describes matching up data points from one document format to another. For example, if my company received an EDI request in AS2 format and we used XML internally, I would map the fields from the AS2 document to a new XML document that my systems could read. Mapped fields could include things like the part numbers that the company is ordering, the shipping address, etc...

EDI is basically a canonical.

Many companies have their own systems to handle accounting, inventory, warehouse, etc. They want to trade electronically with their partners, but their partners use a different ERP. EDI provides a bridge for one of these systems to the other.

Mapping is the definition used to translate a file from the format needed by ERP A into the format needed by ERP B.

The most common versions and formats of EDI are standardized by a board who decides if additional qualifiers, loops, segments, or other modifications are necessary.

To comment on the previous answer, AS2 is not a format, but a protocol sometimes used to transfer these files between partners.