ASC X12 OTD Library: Introduction

The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 was chartered by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1979 to develop uniform standards for interindustry electronic interchange of business transactions. The result was the X12 standard. This standard allows the electronic exchange of machine-readable information between businesses.

Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA) group publishes the X12 standard. This X12 group develops, maintains, interprets, and promotes the proper use of the ASC standard. The group comes together three times a year to develop and maintain electronic EDI standards. The DISA group’s main objective is to develop standards to facilitate electronic interchange that relates to business transactions, such as order placement and processing, shipping and receiving information, invoicing, and payment information.

For more information on the X12 standard, see the following Web sites:

http://www.disa.org and specifically http://www.x12.org/x12org/index.cfm

X12 implementation guides can be obtained at the following Web sites:

http://www.wpc-edi.com; specifically, http://www.wpc-edi.com/tg4/tg4home.asp

ASC X12 messages have a message structure, which indicates how data elements are organized and related to each other for a particular EDI transaction. In the Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite, message structures are defined as OTDs. Each OTD consists of:

• Physical hierarchy: The predefined way in which envelopes, segments, and data elements are organized to describe a particular ASC X12 EDI transaction.

• Delimiters: The specific predefined characters that are used to mark the beginning and end of envelopes, segments, and data elements.

• Properties: The characteristics of a data element, such as the length of each element, default values, and indicators that specify attributes of a data element, for example, whether it is required, optional, or repeating.

The transaction set structure of an invoice that is sent from one trading partner to another defines the header, trailer, segments, and data elements required by invoice transactions. The ASC X12 OTD Library for a specific version includes transaction set structures for each of the transactions available in that version. You can use these structures as provided, or customize them to suit your business needs.

eGate Integrator uses OTDs based on ASC X12 message structures to verify that the data in the messages coming in or going out is in the correct format. There is a message structure for each ASC X12 transaction.

The list of transactions provided is different for each version of ASC X12.

The ASC X12 OTD Library provides ASC X12 OTDs that you can use to build Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite Projects for interfacing with ASC X12 systems. You can use the OTDs standalone with eGate Integrator or in combination with eXchange Integrator and eGate Integrator.