Setting Delimiters and Indicators

The OTDs must include some way for delimiters to be defined so that they can be mapped successfully from one OTD to another. The UN/EDIFACT delimiters are as follows:

• Data element separator (default is a plus sign)

• Subelement separator/component element separator (default is a colon)

• Repetition separator (default is an asterisk)

• Segment terminator (default is a single quote)

When unmarshaling inbound messages, the UN/EDIFACT OTD uses delimiters specified in the UNA segment when that segment is present. If the segment is absent, the OTD uses the default industrial standard delimiters. It is unnecessary to specify delimiters for incoming messages.

For outbound messages using UN/EDIFACT OTDs, you can specify delimiters in two ways:

1. You can set the delimiter and indicator characters from the corresponding elements within the UNB segment. For more information, refer to UNA Segment Support.

2. You can set the delimiters in the Java Collaboration Editor using the methods or bean nodes that are provided in the OTDs. Use the following methods to specify delimiters and indicators:

   • setDecimalMark

   • setDefaultEdifactDelimiters

   • setElementSeparator

   • setRelease

   • setSegmentTerminator

   • setSubelementSeparator

   • setRepetitionSeparator

   • setSubelementSeparator

If the input data is already unmarshaled into an UN/EDIFACT OTD, you can use the get methods to retrieve the delimiters from the input data. If the Collaboration puts the data into UN/EDIFACT format, you can use the set methods to set the delimiters in the output OTD. See Get and Set Methods.