BizTalk Server: EDI 856 – Mapping, Grouping and Sorting

We have to create a Visual Studio Solution and an Empty BizTalk Server Project. We also need to create a Strong Name and, just for internal organization purposes, we will create three folders inside the project: Schemas, Pipelines and Maps.

We have to add the EDI 856 Schema (Version 4010) and Generate the Schema for the Delimited Flat File.

Since the Solution is dealing with a Delimited Flat File, we need to create/include a Pipeline to serialize the XML document into delimited flat file format.

We have to create a new Map to transform from EDI 856 to the Delimited Flat File. Also, this blog post covers the use of a whole External XSLT style sheet to conduct the transformation, consequently, we have to create an XSL File as well.

A common practice is to declare all the namespaces within the stylesheet header.

In some cases the Global Variables constitute a good option to handle constants and/or global scope values. In this case, the Shipment Id is a good candidate, it will be handled using a global var.

Our first goal is to locate/iterate all the Purchase Orders. We know from our data analysis the POs are included into the HL Loops where HL03 = ‘O’.

Behind the Scenes: In a human-readable sentence, these XPath Expressions executes the following processes:

• The first one match=”ns0:X12_00401_856″ reads and points to the XML Root node, every occurrence generates a call to the Main Template
• Once the main template is called, the target XML Root node is created (GenericASN) using the corresponding Namespace (n1, see above)
• Inside the new Target Root Node, a second XPath Expression is created to locate and iterate all the HLLoop1 nodes where the sub-element HL03 equals to “O”. For every occurrence, the Template PO is called

As I mentioned before, the PO Template is called for every Purchase Order into the Global EDI (XML Representation), it receives the pointer to the occurrence generated by the Main PO Iteration. The first step to achieve inside this template is to determine the Purchase Order Number and store it into a local variable POrder.

Behind the Scenes: Take note the XPath Expression includes the sub-elements’ internal paths (ns0:PRF…), it doesn’t include the whole path (ns0:HLLoop1/ns0:PRF…) since the pointer is located inside the HLoop1, the same logic applies for all the map.

Next, we have to isolate the nodes/elements that belong to the current Purchase Order. It can be achieved using a new XPath Expression that combines the Purchase Order as a key and the current PO pointer (position inside the Global XML). An array is generated as result.

Behind the Scenes: Once again, in a human-readable sentence, this XPath Expression selects all the nodes that accomplish with the following conditions:

• The sub-element HL03 value equals to “I” or “D” (parts and measurements)
• The preceding sibling HLoop1 where HL03 equals to “O” and PRF01 equals to the Purchase Order Number (Purchase Order Node)
• The Purchase Order sequence (position into the Global XML) equals to the current pointer only

All right, we have until now the Purchase Order and its nodes, we need to determine a Unique Dimensions List (Measurement Width) using the nodes array generated above. There are several options to achieve this goal, we will use a List Variable so we have to consider the following scenarios:

• The PO includes only one node
• The PO nodes include only one Width Measurement
• The PO nodes include several Width Measurements

Behind the Scenes: Some topics to review/take note into these XPath Expressions:

• The sentence copy-of is being used instead of value-of, the reason behind this decision is the iteration we need to apply later. The copy-of sentence gets the whole node while the value-of gets only the value (one node/measurement condition use cases)
• If the PO has only one node, the value is extracted directly
• If the PO has several nodes but only one measurement, the same logic applies, the value is extracted directly
• If the PO has several nodes and several measurements, a new XPath Expression is used to determine a Unique Value List. In a human-readable sentence, the expression reads the nodes one by one and extract only the measurements where there is not any occurrence equal on the following nodes

Finally we have all the data and keys that we need: The PO Number, the PO Nodes and the Measurements Unique List. It’s time to map all together and create the target file. The following section includes the logic and expressions to:

• Iterate the Measurements’ Unique List
• Select the PO Rolls that accomplish with the Measurement Width in process
• Call a Template to create the Header Record per PO and Measurement
• Iterate the PO Nodes and call a Template to create a Detail Record per Roll

Behind the Scenes: Note the use of msxsl:node-set to convert a result tree fragment into a node set, it’s required to normalize the Unique List due the different scenarios described above.

These templates are pretty simple, they receive parameters and map single nodes according the target schema. In some cases, Xslt functions are used to calculate totals.

Behind the Scenes: Once again, take note the expressions used to call/inside these templates include referenced node positions only.

A simple BizTalk Application that references the EDI Application to make use of all the Schemas, Pipelines, etc. pre-built and provided by Microsoft.

Also, a couple of Business Partners (Parties) with their corresponding Business Profiles and a simple Trading Partner Agreement.

The EDI 856 Messages will be picked up by BizTalk through the File Adapter, and they will be delivered to the Message Box. The EDI Disassembler component will take care of all the validations.

A send port will subscribe the messages received on the port described above, the Map and Pipeline created are used at this port to transform and transmit the the data to a target flat file.