UNA Segment Support

All UN/EDIFACT messages have a UNA segment (service string advice). It is used to send delimiter and indicator characters. The UNA segment is optional per the UN/EDIFACT specification.

The string has a mandatory fixed length of 9 characters. The first three are “UNA,” immediately followed by the 6 characters as defined in ISO 9735.

The UNA segment template is a fixed length with segment ID = UNA, followed by 6 one-byte fields. Each field specifies a separator or other service character. For more information, refer to Setting Delimiters and Indicators.

The OTD Library provides the getmarshalUNA() method to UN/EDIFACT OTD top “outer” level with its Java type of java.lang.Boolean. For information, refer to getMarshalUNA.

• If its value is java.lang.Boolean.TRUE, then UNA segment data is always included in the output message.

• If its value is java.lang.Boolean.FALSE, then UNA segment data is never included in the output message.

• If its value is null (or user never sets its value), then inclusion of UNA segment data in the output message is based on the following:

If any delimiter values are set through UNA segment object, the UNA segment data is included in the output message regardless of default or non-default delimiters are used. Otherwise,

• If non-default delimiters are used, then UNA segment data is included in the output message.

• If default delimiters are used, then UNA segment data is not included in the output message.