This server product provides B2B electronic document exchange including e-mailed purchase orders, invoices and statements, and various graphically printed documents. This product includes some workflow logic similar to Microsoft BizTalk Server. Although since re-written by Peter Kenyon, I wrote the original B2B EDI code that this .Net product was built on.
EDI Server monitors a nominated folder that an application places XML documents in for processing.
When processing a document, a transformation is applied to it to convert it into an appropriate format, then delivers it to a subsystem which will transfer it to its destination (generally a customer’s EDI system).
These actions are controlled by fields within the XML file. A field named ACTION specifies the delivery system to be used, and another named TRANSFORM specifies the transformation. Other fields represent parameters for use by the delivery system and / or transformation.
Currently 5 delivery systems exist:
-
SMTP - The SMTP delivery system delivers documents via SMTP email.
-
HTTP - The HTTP delivery system delivers documents by HTTP post.
-
FTP - The FTP delivery system delivers to an FTP drop directory.
-
FileSys - The FileSys deliver system saves the document to a local directory.
-
Print - The Print delivery system prints the document to a Windows printer.
Transformations available include PDF and EDIFACT.
