5 Guidelines for Interfaces with other Systems and Tools

This topic provides guidelines to establish interface with other systems and tools.

Guidelines

The client could be using others systems for various purposes and there might be requirements for such external systems to either import data from/export data to FCIS.

This exercise closely follows the steps outlined under the topic Data Set up/Conversion. The data being imported should satisfy the following conditions:

• The external data element being imported should have a corresponding equivalent in the importing system
• The format (datatype, size) of the data element being imported should match that available in the importing system

Steps involved in the interface operation

The steps involved in the interface operation is broadly explained as follows:

• A detailed study has to be conducted by the team on the interface requirements. document has to be prepared explaining the requirements & the mapping relationship between the exporting & importing systems. This has to be signed off by the client.
• An interface program will have to be developed to
  • Extract data from the exporting system
  • Convert the data so as to make it compatible to the importing system
  • Import the data
• The program developed has to be tested in a separate test environment. On successful completion of the testing exercise, the utility has to be signed off.