2

I am currently implementing an EDI solution in BizTalk Server 2010. This is the scenario:

BizTalk is responsible for the correct message routing between a X.400 mailbox and the customer's ERP software. It is also used to put information about the exchanged message into a SharePoint site using the SharePoint webservices.
I am using Role Links and the BizTalk party management to apply the correct settings (send ports, password in UNB6 segment, etc.).

Now I have the following question:
When I try to fetch an outgoing INVOIC message from the customer's ERP system, extract the relevant information in an orchestration and write it into the SharePoint site, the receive port using the EDI receive pipeline gets suspended with the following error message:

An output message of the component "EDI disassembler" in receive pipeline 
"**********.Pipelines.FileNamePromotionEDIReceivePipeline, **********.Pipelines, 
Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=****************" is suspended 
due to the following error: 
     Error: 1 (Miscellaneous error)
     33: Invalid occurence outside message, package or group.
The sequence number of the suspended message is 1.

This happens because the message uses a CR and LF as suffix after each segment delimiter. Now I could add the ASCII-hex-codes for CR and LF to the "EfactDelimiters" setting of the pipeline, but the problem is that there are other messages without the CR and LF, which then could not be received using the same pipeline. By the way, when I fetch one of those messages without CR and LF using the pipeline also without CR and LF set as delimiters, the receive port also gets suspended, this time with an error message resulting from the usage of dots instead of commas as decimal separator (although I have enabled the option "UseDotAsDecimalSeparator" in the pipeline). Again, only changing the EfactDelimiters helps.

I thought that the "Character set and separators" page in the party agreement was supposed to make exactly that possible: To set the delimiters individually for each business party. But the changes I make in these settings seem to have no effect whatsoever. I set the "UNA6 Suffix" to "CR LF" and the "Decimal Notation (UNA3)" to ".(Decimal)", restart the host instance... same problem.

Can anyone help?

Achim Zeileis
  • 15,710
  • 1
  • 39
  • 49
Prometheus
  • 21
  • 2

1 Answers1

0

I never used biztalk, but I know my EDIFACT, and as far as I know, those messages containing CR/LF are syntactically wrong. The UNA6 Suffix seems to be an addition by Microsoft, as I can find no trace of it in the official documents on EDIFACT at UNECE.

Normally, the chars you want to use as special chars in an EDIFACT message are set by the special (optinal) UNA segment, which always comes first. When you write, you set the separators / delimiters, I don't really know, what you mean by that, as it could refer either to setting the options for the created message (what delimiters are used in the message), setting the delimiters used for parsing by the receiving program, or it could refer to the chars that are printed in the UNA segment.

Know, in the UNA segment, there is no way that I know of, to indicate the use of any UNA6 suffix (as stated quite explicitly in the documents, the UNA segment has to be exactly 9 characters of length, see 8.3 Interchange formatting rules). That leads me to the conclusion, that you set the options for the created messages. I would not advise to use a UNA6 suffix, if you can avoid it. It might be nice for humans to read the message, but it does not belong there and is not useful for the machine to read.

If the receiving program has no option to allow optional occurrence of CR/LF, and you can not avoid a mix of those to kind of messages, I see no other way for you other than somehow insert a small program that gets rid of the CR/LF.

The most important principle is of course, to make the sending and the receiving program talk in the same syntax, otherwise it can't work. The same thing goes for the problem with the decimal separator. As of Syntax rules, 10.1, either the comma or the dot is allowed, which is a quite loose definition. If you want to be on the save side, send an UNA segment, specifying which one you use, and then only use that one.

I'm not really sure, how much this helps you with the specific problem, as it might be a thing that's only a question on how to configure biztalk, but I thing some background information should be useful.

kratenko
  • 7,354
  • 4
  • 36
  • 61