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covast

COVAST B2B SUITE
2006
FOR
MICROSOFT BIZTALK
SERVER
Covast B2B Suite 2006 for Microsoft BizTalk Server – White Paper
February 2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................................ 3
3
THE B2B SUITE'S'S ROLE WITHIN THE BIZTALK FRAMEWORK ....................................... 4
2
4
5
6
7
8
9
WHAT THE COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 PROVIDES ...................................................................... 3
COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 FOR MICROSOFT BIZTALK SERVER FEATURES.................. 7
4.1 SUPPORTED STANDARDS .............................................................................................................................. 7
4.2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................................................... 7
4.3 COVAST TRANSPORT ADAPTERS .................................................................................................................. 8
4.4 OUTBOUND BATCHING ................................................................................................................................ 10
4.5 INBOUND DE-BATCHING ............................................................................................................................ 12
4.5.1 Data Splitting .................................................................................................................................. 12
4.6 TRADING PARTNER MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................................. 12
4.7 DOCUMENT DEFINITION MANAGEMENT ..................................................................................................... 15
4.8 SCALABILITY AND FAILOVER ...................................................................................................................... 15
4.9 UNICODE AND MBCS SUPPORT ................................................................................................................ 16
4.10
PASS-THROUGH ...................................................................................................................................... 16
4.11
CUSTOM NUMBERING.............................................................................................................................. 17
4.12
ERROR ACCEPTANCE SETTINGS ............................................................................................................. 18
4.13
FULL END-TO-END TRACKING ............................................................................................................... 19
MANAGING DOCUMENT DEFINITIONS.......................................................................................... 25
5.1
5.2
5.3
THE EDI EXPLORER .................................................................................................................................... 25
PRINTING IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES ................................................................................................. 28
SCHEMAS AND THE COVAST EDI ACCELERATOR ..................................................................................... 30
DEPLOYING YOUR EDI SOLUTION................................................................................................... 32
COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 DESIGN AND RUNTIME COMPONENTS................................. 32
7.1 DEVELOPING YOUR SOLUTION IN THE COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 AND VISUAL STUDIO .................... 33
7.2 THE COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 FOR BIZTALK SERVER DURING RUNTIME ........................................... 34
7.2.1 Receiving an EDI Document ...................................................................................................... 34
7.2.2 Sending an EDI Document ......................................................................................................... 35
MANAGING YOUR EDI SOLUTION .................................................................................................... 36
8.1
8.2
B2B SUITE ADMINISTRATION CONSOLE .................................................................................................. 36
THE ARCHIVE VIEWER ................................................................................................................................ 37
SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... 38
10 HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE PREREQUISITES ........................................................................ 39
11 CONTACT INFORMATION ...................................................................................................................... 40
© 2007 Covast
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February 2007
INTRODUCTION
Migrating to new open standards like XML poses daunting challenges for businesses with
large investments in EDI and other non-XML systems. Although it has long been predicted
that EDI would eventually fade away and be supplanted by newer technologies, the fact is
that, given the enormous resources that for decades have been invested in EDI
infrastructure and the number of companies that depend on it, EDI is still very much alive
and it plays a vital role in electronic commerce the world over.
For now and the foreseeable future, the best solution is to bridge the gap between EDI and
XML in order to integrate the two, which opens up a whole new range or possibilities for
companies seeking new markets and trading partners.
The Covast B2B Suite 2006 for Microsoft BizTalk Server provides full, seamless integration
between EDI and XML. With integrated Trading Partner Management, full scalability, the full
range of Covast-provided adapters and the wide range of supported EDI formats, the Covast
B2B Suite 2006 for Microsoft BizTalk Server is the best EDI solution available on the
Windows platform.
2
WHAT THE COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 FOR MICROSOFT BIZTALK SERVER
PROVIDES
The Covast B2B Suite 2006 for Microsoft BizTalk Server is an extension to Microsoft BizTalk
Server 2006 that makes BizTalk a fully capable EDI server. It provides the translation of a
wide variety of EDI documents to and from XML as well as acknowledgement generation,
greatly enhancing the EDI support native in BizTalk Server 2006. The B2B Suite supports
most of the EDI standards being used by businesses today in their electronic data
exchanges.
The Covast B2B Suite is tightly integrated with the BizTalk Server 2006 e-business platform
and is built on the latest .NET technology. The integrated Microsoft/Covast solution allows
you to obtain a unified view in terms of Business Activity Monitoring, management and
configuration for all your XML and EDI transactions.
The ability to interconnect the many diverse types of data processing software in place today
eases the flow of data between previously incompatible systems and makes it possible for
entities to establish trading partner relationships that were hitherto unavailable. By
standardizing on the Covast/Microsoft integration platform, you can leverage your current
EDI infrastructure and trading partner relationships and take advantage of the proliferating
use of XML in the electronic data marketplaces.
© 2007 Covast
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THE B2B SUITE'S ROLE WITHIN THE BIZTALK FRAMEWORK
The EDI translation service provided by the EDI Accelerator is implemented within the
BizTalk Server's pipeline component architecture, which means that it is completely flexible
and scalable.
Figure 1 – Translation within pipelines architecture
When an EDI interchange is received from a Covast or Microsoft adapter, it is decrypted and
translated to one or more XML instances by the disassembler component of the EDI Receive
Pipeline. The trading partner information is then resolved. If the EDI interchange contains
batched messages, each XML message resulting from that will be published to the BizTalk
Message Box. The B2B Suite also supports the translation of EDI documents when the
sender and/or receiver of the document cannot be determined. In this case, the document is
translated and sent to the BizTalk Message Box – logic within an orchestration or another
process then determines how to handle the message(s).
In an outbound exchange, XML messages are received from the BizTalk Message Box. The
assembler component of the EDI Send Pipeline resolves the partner information and
translates the XML messages into EDI. If multiple XML messages share the same
interchange, they are batched together into a single EDI file (depending on your trading
partner configuration) and then the EDI file is sent.
Through the use of the pipeline architecture, the B2B Suite adds to the pipeline the
Assembler (ASM) and/or Disassembler (DASM) pipeline components for use with all of the
EDI document types supported by the B2B Suite. Pipeline components have direct access to
the EDI document definitions stored in the BizTalk assemblies and can therefore parse and
serialize EDI instances at a high performance rate.
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Each of the pipeline components performs specific tasks:
Disassembler
 Validate the EDI instance.
 Translate the EDI instance to an XML instance.
 Update the EDI audit trail.
 Correlate (reconcile) acknowledgements.
Assembler
 Translate the XML instance to an EDI instance.
 Validate the generated EDI instance.
 Update the EDI audit trail.
The adapters provided by Covast interact with the pipeline components in the same way that
the adapters native to BizTalk do. Covast provides a wide variety of transport adapters,
which allows you to select from a wide range of VAN adapters and peer-to-peer protocols as
a means of exchanging data with your trading partners. The full list of Covast adapters
appears in section 4.3 of this document.
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Errors in EDI to XML (and vice versa) translation result in suspended documents. In the case
of a translation error, a negative acknowledgement will be generated that contains all details
related to the error or errors. Translation errors can be visualized from a B2B Suite report
generated in BizTalk's Health and Activity Tracking tool (HAT) - This provides the complete
details needed to report back to the originator of the message the reason for the fault. B2B
Suite reports are described more fully in the section Full End-to-End Tracking.
Figure 2 – Visualizing errors in EDI documents
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COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 FOR MICROSOFT BIZTALK SERVER FEATURES
The Covast B2B Suite 2006 for Microsoft BizTalk Server features are described in this
chapter.
4.1 SUPPORTED STANDARDS
The B2B Suite provides full support for the following EDI standards, including all subsets:

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UN/EDIFACT (Worldwide standard)
o EANCOM (European retail)
ASC X12 (US standard)
o VICS (US general merchandise retail)
o WINS (US warehousing retail)
o UCS (US grocery retail)
TRADACOMS (UK standard)
VDA (German automotive)
ODETTE (Automotive)
Cargo IMP (Airfreight)
All other trading-partner specific documents that differ from the defined standards
Your own standard(s) that you create yourself using the document definition editing
capabilities of the Covast EDI Explorer and EDI Editor.
4.2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgments are messages that are relayed to the sender of an EDI document to
inform them how the document has been processed and, when relevant, to indicate whether
any errors were encountered during processing. Acknowledgements report back on the
status of the interchange(s) and functional group(s) within an EDI document. The B2B Suite
supports the following acknowledgement functionality:
UN/EDIFACT CONTRL

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Functional acknowledgement reconciliation
Passing functional acknowledgements to BizTalk
Generation of functional acknowledgements, including summary acknowledgements
ASC X12

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Interchange acknowledgement reconciliation
Functional acknowledgement reconciliation, including the status codes “P” (partially
accepted), “A” (accepted) and “E” (errors)
Passing acknowledgements to BizTalk
Generation of functional acknowledgements including summary acknowledgements
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The generation of standalone and "piggybacked" technical (TA1) acknowledgements.
The B2B Suite provides full reporting of acknowledgement details through the Health
and Activity Tracking (HAT tool).
The B2B Suite gives you a great deal of flexibility and control over whether and how
acknowledgements are reconciled. When receiving an incoming EDI document, you can
configure the following acknowledgement settings at the document or trading partner level:

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
Whether to send an acknowledgement when receiving an EDI document (always or
never).
Send a functional acknowledgement to your trading partner only when translation
fails.
Whether to send a summary 997 acknowledgements.
Whether functional acknowledgments should be reconciled with the original outbound
message(s).
Pass the functional acknowledgement to BizTalk without any action.
When sending an EDI interchange to your trading partner, you can specify:



Whether to expect the recipient to send a functional acknowledgement (always or
never).
Whether to always expect the recipient to send a functional acknowledgement within
the specified time period.
How often to reconcile acknowledgements based on a configurable time-out period.
For ASC X12 documents, the B2B Suite also supports the sending and receiving of technical
acknowledgements, also referred to as the TA1 interchange acknowledgement. TA1
interchange acknowledgments (TA1) are used to acknowledge the syntactical correctness of
the envelope associated with an ANSI X12 transaction.
4.3 COVAST TRANSPORT ADAPTERS
The Covast B2B Suite provides many transport adapters for VAN (Value Added Network) and
peer-to-peer protocols for sending and receiving EDI documents. In addition to EDI
documents, you can also send any non-EDI format documents, such as XML and flat files
using the Covast transport adapters.
Because the translation of EDI documents happens within the BizTalk pipelines, you can use
any of the transport adapters provided by both BizTalk Server 2006 and the Covast B2B
Suite for sending EDI messages to and receiving messages from your trading partner. The
ability to use any transport adapter makes the Microsoft/Covast EDI solution both extremely
flexible and powerful because the full set of adapters offered by the B2B Suite and BizTalk
include the most commonly used transports in use today.
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The B2B Suite provides full EDI document support whether you use the adapters provided by
the B2B Suite or those native to BizTalk.
The following are the transport adapters supplied with the B2B Suite:
VAN Adapters (in alphabetical order)
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400Net Messaging Service (NL)
Atlas 400 (F)
BusinessMail (D)
GXS EDI*Express
GXS Tradanet (GB)
IBM (GXS) Information Exchange
ICC.net
Inovis
Kleinschmidt
SITA
Sterling Commerce
Transettlements (Descartes)
Peer-to-Peer Protocol Adapters


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AS2 (Drummond Group certified)
OFTP (Odette File Transfer Protocol – Automotive)
FTP (Client)
POP3/SMTP (with the capability of sending EDI interchanges as email attachments)
MSMQ
IBM MQSeries
HTTP and HTTP/S (with capability of sending EDI interchanges as single-part or multipart bodies)
Other

File system adapter (local or shared network resource)
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4.4 OUTBOUND BATCHING
The B2B Suite provides the batching of outbound documents within a single interchange.
Outbound batching is executed according to the rules you implement in your trading partner
configuration. Outbound batching is performed by the supplied Covast batching
orchestrations.
Figure 3 – Outbound batching configuration at the party alias level
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There are several options you can use to configure outbound batching. These options give
you a great amount of control over how and whether to batch outbound documents sent to
each of your trading partners:
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No batching
Send each translated XML message individually.
Source document type
Batch outbound documents together that have the same document type.
Target format version
Batch outbound documents together that have the same target format version. This
makes it possible for you to batch a number of different document types together
that, for example, all end up in an EDIFACT interchange.
X12 style
Batch outbound documents together using the standard ASC X12 batching model
(available for ASC X12 documents only).
Common Access batching
Batch documents together that match specific labels that appear in the outbound XML
document. Common Access gives you a great deal of control over how multiple
documents are batched together. For example, you can batch outbound documents
together when either the specified number of documents in an interchange has been
reached or when a document containing a label which specifies that it is the last
document in the sequence. This batching behaviour can be influenced from within a
map.
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4.5 INBOUND DE-BATCHING
When the Covast B2B Suite receives inbound batched documents, the document is debatched and each individual transaction within the interchange is translated to a single XML
message. The translated XML messages are then transmitted singly to the BizTalk Message
Box.
4.5.1
DATA SPLITTING
Using special actions that you define within the Covast EDI Explorer, it is possible to split
incoming batched messages at the sub-document level (also referred to as a sub-document
break). This allows you a great deal of flexibility with regard to how incoming messages are
translated, split and sent to the Message Box. For example, if a segment has a repeating line
item element, you can create a separate XML message for each line item, each wrapped in
an identical envelope.
4.6 TRADING PARTNER MANAGEMENT
The B2B Suite's trading partner management tool makes it easy to manage all aspects of
your trading partner relationships. For each of your trading partners you can specify
precisely how sent and received documents are handled, including:
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Whether to send or request an acknowledgement during an exchange and the type of
acknowledgement it should be.
Whether to accept or reject documents containing translation errors according to the
error type.
How and whether to batch outbound documents.
How to de-batch incoming EDI documents.
Which character set to use to encode documents.
The type of character separator(s) to use when translating documents from XML to
EDI.
Whether to apply custom reference numbering at the interchange, group, or
document level.
Trading partners are listed in the Trading Partner Administrator in a tree structure.
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Figure 4 – B2B Suite Trading Partner Administrator
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For each of your trading partner's party alias, you can configure all aspects of the
relationship.
Figure 5 – Party alias envelope definitions
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4.7 DOCUMENT DEFINITION MANAGEMENT
The Covast B2B Suite contains a vast repository of EDI document definitions (downloadable
from the Covast website’s client area) that provide support for most of the document
standards in use today. Using the EDI Explorer, you can fully manage all the EDI document
schemas and formats needed to support the exchange of EDI documents between you and
your business partner(s).
You can modify all aspects of the standard document definitions in order to create trading
partner-specific document definitions or subsets of standards, including adding or modifying
segments, elements, loops, and so forth. You can also change the properties of document
components, for example by changing a segment or element from "required" to "optional",
defining how the parts of documents should be formatted, changing the dependencies
between segments and elements, and so on. See the section "Managing document
definitions using the EDI Explorer" later in this document for more information.
4.8 SCALABILITY AND FAILOVER
As you scale your BizTalk Server solution to accommodate increased data processing
capacity, the EDI Accelerator follows suit. You can run multiple translation pipeline instances
concurrently, each one capable of processing incoming and outgoing messages in order to
achieve high performance and availability. Additionally, when multiple translation pipeline
instances are running concurrently, should one fail, the processing tasks will be immediately
picked up by one or more of the other instances, eliminating the possibility of data loss or
interruption in the flow of data, with minimal effect on performance.
The bottom line: The B2B Suite fully leverages the BizTalk scale-out model because it is built
as an integral part of the BizTalk framework .
© 2007 Covast
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4.9 UNICODE AND MBCS SUPPORT
The use of Multiple Byte Character Sets (MBCS) and Unicode in electronic data exchanges is
increasing all the time in order to accommodate the exchange of EDI messages in languages
containing double-byte characters, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The Covast B2B
Suite supports the complete end-to-end handling of multi-byte encoded EDI messages,
including the EDIFACT UNOX and UNOY standard syntaxes.
Every EDI standard supported by the B2B Suite can be configured so that specific instances
of the EDI Assembler pipelines use either one of the available single-byte character sets or
one of the multi-byte character sets to encode outbound EDI instances.
Even exchanging ASC X12 transactions or other EDI standards that do not have native
support for multi byte characters can be accomplished using, for example, UTF-16 encoding,
and this can be configured on a trading partner basis, if required.
4.10 PASS-THROUGH
The B2B Suite provides full pass-through functionality for inbound documents. Based on the
parameters you define, you can configure the B2B Suite to pass documents directly to
BizTalk without translation. This is useful in cases where you receive documents from
unrecognized recipients, documents of unknown format, documents containing interchanges
that use multiple formats, and so forth.
© 2007 Covast
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4.11 CUSTOM NUMBERING
In UN/EDIFACT and ASC X12 EDI documents (and other EDI standards as well), special
numbering is used in the body of documents to identify its parts and to describe other
aspects of its content. In UN/EDIFACT, these numbers are referred to as control references
and in ASC X12 they are referred to as control numbers.
When sending outbound documents to trading partners, the EDI Accelerator supports the
use of custom numbering in order to override the default number generation. Custom
numbering can be applied at the Interchange, Group, and Document level. In addition, you
can assign a custom numbering scheme to the sender, format, document type, or a
combination of the three.
Figure 6 – Custom numbering configuration
Custom numbering allows you to uniquely identify the documents you send (and receive) as
well as the parts within a document, which allows you to better track the flow of documents
that you send to your trading partner(s) and receive from them.
© 2007 Covast
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4.12 ERROR ACCEPTANCE SETTINGS
The Covast B2B Suite allows you to customize error acceptance. Error acceptance settings
allow you to relax the rules regarding the errors that are acceptable in received EDI
documents during validation. By default, received EDI documents that contain errors will not
be translated into XML and published to the BizTalk Message Box. However, some errors
occurring in documents may be acceptable or are not serious enough to cause a data
exchange to fail.
The B2B Suite's error acceptance settings make it possible to strictly control the specific
types of errors that will be accepted so the received document will still be translated and
published to the BizTalk Message Box. The application of error acceptance settings is quite
flexible – you can select whether to apply them to all EDI messages, specific EDI message
types, at the trading partner level, or a combination of message type and trading partner.
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4.13 FULL END-TO-END TRACKING
You can fully track EDI messages end-to-end using the tools provided by the EDI Accelerator
and BizTalk Server 2006. In BizTalk, complete information about sent and received EDI
documents, as well as EDI metadata, is available using the EDI Accelerator 2006 reports
within the BizTalk Health and Activity Tracking (HAT) tool.
Using the Covast EDI Accelerator for BizTalk Server 2006 reports in HAT, you can quickly
and easily track the current status of messages being processed as well as the complete
history of sent and received EDI documents. In addition, using the Archive Viewer, you can
view archived interchanges in order to resurrect the structure of historical exchanges as well
as filter messages by status, document type, sender, recipient, and so forth.
Figure 7 – Sample Covast B2B Suite 2006 EDI report
© 2007 Covast
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In a B2B Suite 2006 report, you can expand each message in order to view the full details of
the message. At a glance at the list, you can determine the status of recent interchanges:
Symbol
None
© 2007 Covast
Status
The message was accepted.
The message was accepted with errors.
The message was rejected.
There was a problem with a received receipt, a receipt timeout expired, or a
receipt could not be sent.
The message was successfully sent or processed.
The system is waiting for a receipt for this message to be received or sent.
If the message was sent or received using a Covast transport and this symbol
appears next to Transport on the transport tab, further information is available in
the transport database
There was a problem with a functional acknowledgement related to this
message.
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EDI message details contain all the information you need to track the EDI message, view
document and reference details, view the status of acknowledgements and the full
acknowledgement text, and view the full message.
Figure 8 – EDI message details
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Figure 9 – Viewing the full EDI message
If the EDI document was rejected due to errors, the exact cause of the error and a solution
to the error is given (see also Figure 2 on page 6).
© 2007 Covast
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Figure 10 – EDI message error details
Additionally, for inbound EDI documents, if an error or errors are encountered during the
processing of the data, they will be fully detailed in the returned acknowledgement. This
allows your trading partner to quickly and easily pinpoint the cause of the problem(s) so
they can address them and resubmit the EDI document.
© 2007 Covast
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For functional acknowledgements, summary functional acknowledgements can provide the
following statuses:
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Status "A" (Accepted)
The inbound EDI document was accepted. No message level information appears in
the acknowledgement.
Status "P" (Partially accepted)
Some of the documents in the batched inbound document contained errors.
Status "E” (Errors)
The inbound EDI document was rejected due to one or more unacceptable errors.
© 2007 Covast
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5
February 2007
MANAGING DOCUMENT DEFINITIONS
EDI document definitions are the core of any EDI implementation which is why management
of these definitions is such an important task. The B2B Suite 2006 comes with a complete
repository and a management environment available from within the Visual Studio
workbench for effective EDI document definition configuration and maintenance.
5.1
THE EDI EXPLORER
Managing the vast repository of supported document definitions and error acceptance
settings is made simple using the EDI Explorer's document definition management tool,
hosted by Visual Studio. Every aspect of a document definition can be quickly and easily
viewed or modified using the visualization tool.
The EDI Explorer presents the details of document definitions using both detailed lists as
well as branching diagrams that allow you to visualize the hierarchy and relationships
between the segments and elements within the document definition.
To view or modify the definition of the various parts of the document definition, you simply
click the document definition component in the representation of the component in a
branching diagram or in a list view and the details appear in the Visual Studio Properties
dialog box where you can view and/or edit them.
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Figure 11 – The EDI Explorer showing a branching diagram of a document definition
Document definitions are arranged in a database tree structure. By navigating through the
tree, you have complete access to all aspects of each document definition (elements,
segments, version, release, and so forth), which allows you to quickly and easily view and
manage your trading partner-specific and standard document definitions.
In a branching diagram view, document definitions and their subsets are listed in the tree
hierarchy according to document type (standard), version, and release. For each unique
combination of document type, version, and release, the B2B Suite can store one
implementation of a message structure in the EDI repository. Using the tool, you can
manage all subsets and partner specific modifications to a schema in combination with the
official standard structure of any document type.
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Figure 12 – Document definition list view
For use with BizTalk, Covast EDI document definitions are converted into XSD schemas and
added to your BizTalk project as generated items. See section 5.3 for a detailed description
of the Covast B2B Suite EDI schemas.
© 2007 Covast
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5.2
February 2007
PRINTING IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
The EDI Explorer provides full support for printing implementation guidelines. This feature
allows you to view complete information about all the parts of an implementation guideline
including the properties of all segments, elements, code lists, and so forth, as well as the
hierarchical relationship and dependencies between all parts of the document standard.
Figure 13 – Detail of a printout of a hierarchical branching diagram
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Figure 14 – Printout of a detailed segment/element list
Printouts of implementation guidelines are an excellent way to share the details of your EDI
implementation with new trading partners, helping them to quickly and efficiently set up
their trading relationship with you.
© 2007 Covast
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5.3
February 2007
SCHEMAS AND THE COVAST EDI ACCELERATOR
The Covast B2B Suite generates schemas for the standard and trading partner-specific
document definitions. The schemas are used by BizTalk and the Covast EDI Send and
Receive Pipelines to translate EDI messages to XML (and vice versa), as well as to build the
mappings and orchestrations needed to execute the business processes.
Working with the EDI document definition schemas is easy and flexible. If you exchange EDI
documents with your trading partner that conform to the standard EDI document definitions,
all you have to do is download the schema or schemas for those document types from the
Covast web site, which offers a 1+ GB and growing standards repository, and add them to
your BizTalk solution. It's that easy.
If you are using EDI document definitions that you have modified using the EDI Explorer to
add document components or change some of the rules defining what a well-formed EDI
document is according to your trading partner relationship, all you have to do is generate
the schema(s) for your document definitions in BizTalk after you have defined them.
Figure 15 – Generating XML schemas of EDI document definitions
Once you generate the schemas, they are immediately available for use within BizTalk
because they are added to the BizTalk solution that is currently opened automatically.
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The EDI Accelerator includes and supports several schema types:
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B2B Suite 2006 schemas
Schemas for all supported document definition types in the Covast B2B Suite 2006
for Microsoft BizTalk Server, as well as partner-specific schemas and subsets can be
generated and used in your BizTalk EDI solution.
XDR schemas for BizTalk Server 2002
All XDR schemas developed by Covast for BizTalk Server 2002 can be reused in your
BizTalk Server 2006 projects.
Base EDI for BizTalk Server 2004 schemas
All schemas developed by Covast for the Base EDI Adapter in BizTalk Server 2004
can be reused in your BizTalk Server 2006 projects.
Syntax schema
The syntax schema is used by the B2B Suite to translate and validate EDI document
formats and versions that have an associated syntax document. Syntax documents
contain detailed information about the control segments that define the contents of
well-formed EDI documents. The syntax schema contains the rules defined in all
syntax documents.
Non-dynamic schemas
The Covast B2B Suite uses three non-dynamic schemas to perform various tasks
related to the exchange of EDI documents and acknowledgements:
o Batching schemas – There are two batching schemas that are used by the
pre-batching and batching orchestrations to add metadata to multiple XML
messages that prepares them for batching into a single interchange.
o TA1 schema – The TA1 schema, used in the ASC X12 standard, contains the
information necessary to interpret technical acknowledgements (TA1) received
from your trading partner after you have sent EDI documents to them.
© 2007 Covast
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6
February 2007
DEPLOYING YOUR EDI SOLUTION
Deploying your EDI solution is quick and easy. Because of the B2B Suite's tight integration
with BizTalk Server 2006, when you deploy your BizTalk B2B solution, everything the B2B
Suite requires to translate EDI to XML and XML to EDI messages is included in the BizTalk
solution's assembly. When you deploy your BizTalk solution in your production environment,
all the necessary B2B Suite components are automatically included and the solution is ready
to go live.
7
COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 DESIGN AND RUNTIME COMPONENTS
The typical design and runtime interactions between the B2B Suite 2006 for BizTalk Server
and BizTalk Server 2006 are described below in order to illustrate how the two major
components of your integration platform interact when you are developing your EDI solution
using the B2B Suite and BizTalk Server 2006 and when the deployed solution is in
production.
Figure 16 – B2B Suite/BizTalk Server high level architecture
© 2007 Covast
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February 2007
7.1 DEVELOPING YOUR SOLUTION IN THE COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 AND VISUAL
STUDIO
During the design phase of your EDI solution, the key tasks you will perform are:
1. Set up/Manage Your Trading Partners
In the Covast B2B Suite 2006 Administration Console, use the Trading Partner
Administrator tool to define your trading partner relationship(s) including the sending
and receiving of acknowledgements, outbound batching, custom numbering, and so
forth.
2. Determine the document types that you will exchange between you and your
trading partner.
Once you determine the type or types of EDI documents that you will send and/or
receive from your trading partner, you can obtain the document definition for the EDI
standard that governs the EDI document type(s) you will trade with your partners
from the Covast website. Covast provides schemas for most of the commonly used
EDI document standards, however, some of the less-used document definitions are
not available and you may have to use the EDI Editor to create your own document
definition from which a schema usable by BizTalk can be generated.
3. Create partner-specific document definitions to be used for documents you
will exchange with your trading partner.
If the agreement between you and your trading partner includes documents that vary
from the EDI document definitions as defined by the standard governing bodies, or if
you want to add error acceptance settings that will be applied to the EDI documents
received from your trading partner, modify the document definitions in the EDI
Explorer.
4. Generate the schemas for the document type(s) you will be exchanging with
your trading partner.
Schemas for the document types used by BizTalk that you will exchange between you
and your trading partner can be generated from the EDI Repository. Generally
speaking, if you will exchange EDI documents with your trading partner that conform
to the governed standard, you simply have to download the definitions for the
document type(s) from the Covast web site, import them using the B2B Suite's
Import/Export Wizard and add the generated schemas to your BizTalk project. Covast
provides definitions for most of the commonly used EDI document standards,
however, some of the less-used document definitions are unavailable electronically
and you may have to use the EDI Explorer to create your own document definition
from which a schema can be generated. If you modify document definitions or add
error acceptance settings to your document definitions, then the schema for the
document types is (re)generated from the EDI repository and then it can be added to
or replaced in your BizTalk project.
5. In BizTalk, create your orchestrations, send ports, receive ports and
locations, and develop the other business rules that will apply to the
exchanges you will participate in.
© 2007 Covast
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February 2007
7.2 THE COVAST B2B SUITE 2006 FOR BIZTALK SERVER DURING RUNTIME
When the Covast B2B Suite is deployed in a production environment with the rest of your
BizTalk solution, the sequence of events that transpire when an EDI document is sent and
received are described below in order to illustrate the role of the Covast B2B Suite in the
deployed BizTalk solution.
7.2.1
RECEIVING AN EDI DOCUMENT
When an EDI document or documents are received from an external trading partner, the
following events occur in the production system:
1. The incoming EDI interchange is received by the Covast or Microsoft transport
adapter.
2. The interchange is handed off to the EDI disassembler in the Covast EDI Receive
Pipeline, which is configured on the receive location.
3. The EDI disassembler parses the interchange, debatches it if it contains several
messages and determines the following:
o the format of the interchange(s)
o the sender and recipient
o the document type
o whether a functional acknowledgement (if applicable) should be returned
(based on trading partner agreements).
4. If the EDI file fails validation or some other error occurs, the message is saved in a
suspended state. You can visualize the error or errors in a Covast B2B Suite 2006
report in HAT.
5. If the EDI data passes validation, each EDI message in the interchange is translated
into an XML message using the schema designated for the EDI document type and
the message is then published to the BizTalk Message Box.
© 2007 Covast
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7.2.2
February 2007
SENDING AN EDI DOCUMENT
When an XML document or set of documents to be sent or batched into one interchange and
sent are received from the BizTalk Message Box by a send port subscribing to the message
type(s), the following events occur in the production system:
1. The XML message or XML batch is handed off to the Covast EDI Send Pipeline
configured on the send port.
2. The EDI interchange is built and validated to ensure that it is well formed.
3. The EDI interchange is then handed off to the Covast or Microsoft transport adapter
which is responsible for sending it to the external trading partner.
4. The EDI interchange is sent to the external trading partner.
5. If an acknowledgement is required from the external trading partner, it is reconciled;
if the acknowledgement not arrive within the designated timeout period, the
exchange will be considered failed.
© 2007 Covast
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8
February 2007
MANAGING YOUR EDI SOLUTION
The B2B Suite provides tools that enable you to fully manage and monitor the state of your
deployed EDI solution.
8.1
B2B SUITE ADMINISTRATION CONSOLE
You manage and monitor the current status of your EDI solution using the B2B Suite's
Administration Console. Using the Administration Console you can enable and disable
tracing, configure time-outs, control how documents are archived, configure/modify trading
partner information, tune the system for optimum performance, and so forth.
Figure 17 – Covast B2B Suite Administration Console
© 2007 Covast
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8.2
February 2007
THE ARCHIVE VIEWER
The B2B Suite's Archive Viewer allows you to view the audit trail history of past exchanges.
The Archive Viewer makes it easy to filter the archive in order to quickly locate messages
based on the following criteria:






Interchange/Archive Date
Interchange/Group/Reference number
Tracking and Tracing Key
Sender Party/Department URI
Recipient Party/Department
Sender/Recipient URI
For each message processed, the Archive Viewer shows complete audit trail information, the
interchange data, group data, the message data, and information on errors the message
contains (if any).
Figure 18 – Viewing archived message details in the B2B Suite's Archive Viewer
You configure archive and delete tasks using the Covast B2B Suite Administration Console.
You can choose how and whether messages are archived and when or whether they are
deleted. You can schedule common tasks to run regularly in order to better manage your
© 2007 Covast
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February 2007
message data. You have full control over how or whether messages are archived, whether to
keep interchanges and if so for how long, whether to archive incomplete interchanges,
whether to archive an interchange before deleting it, and so forth.
9
SUMMARY
By combining the Covast B2B Suite with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, you can achieve full
support for your end-to-end EDI requirements. The Covast B2B Suite makes it possible for
you to quickly and easily integrate all your EDI infrastructures with internal applications and
to strengthen and enhance your Internet-based trading partner relationships.
From providing control over the various EDI specifications and versions to thorough auditing
and tracking, the B2B Suite delivers the most robust solution available in the industry.
The Covast B2B Suite not only simplifies the technical challenges, it also dramatically
reduces your implementation timeframe. BizTalk Server customers can establish connectivity
almost immediately and begin exchanging documents in weeks or even days. What’s more,
the solution’s scalable design gives you the flexibility to migrate to XML one project at a time
or completely across your entire enterprise.
The Covast B2B Suite 2006 for Microsoft BizTalk Server: A powerful solution that bridges the
gap between the complex EDI world and the emerging use of XML for business-to-business
data exchanges.
© 2007 Covast
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February 2007
10 HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE PREREQUISITES
To install Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 and the Covast B2B Suite 2006 for BizTalk Server,
the minimum required hardware and software are:








Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (SP1) or Windows 2000 Server (SP4)
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2000 (SP4)
1 Gigahertz (GHz) Intel Pentium-compatible CPU for single processors (900 MHz for
double, 700 MHz for quad)
1 Gigabyte (GB) of RAM
6 Gigabyte (GB) free hard disk space
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
Super VGA monitor (1024 x 768) or higher resolution monitor with 256 colors
For 64-Bit systems, either an AMD Opteron (AMD64) or Intel XEON (EM64T) or
compatible 1.7 GHz or higher processor is recommended.
To run Microsoft BizTalk Server including the Covast B2B Suite 2006 for BizTalk Server in a
production environment, Microsoft and Covast advise a configuration with multiple
processing servers and an SQL Server cluster environment in order to ensure high
availability and handle fail-over scenarios.
The Microsoft/Covast solution is fully capable of scaling up (by adding more CPU power,
CPU's and/or memory to individual servers) and scaling out (by adding more processing
servers to spread the workload).
Covast representatives can assist in determining the best-suited architecture for any specific
situation.
© 2007 Covast
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February 2007
11 CONTACT INFORMATION
North American Headquarters
Covast
3340 Peachtree Road, NE
Tower Place, Suite 580
Atlanta, Georgia 30326
USA
Tel: 1.866.COVAST1 or +1 404.812.7150
Fax: +1 404.812.7155
European Headquarters
Covast
Rivium Quadrant 151
2909 LC Capelle a.d. lJssel
P.O. Box 8738
3009 AS Rotterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 10.235.10.22
Fax: +31 10.288.92.47
E-mail
[email protected]
URL
http://www.covast.com
Covast is a trademark of Covast Corporation. All other product or service names mentioned herein are the
trademarks of their respective owners.
© 2007 Covast
Page 40/40

covast

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