NovellÒ

exteNd Composer

EDI Connect

January 2004

Welcome to Novell^® exteNd Composer^TM EDI Connect Version 5.0. These release notes include the following sections:

What is New	Enhancements in EDI Connect v5.0
Installation notes	Important information about enabling exteNd Composer EDI Connect
Software and hardware requirements	Software and hardware needed to run exteNd Composer EDI Connect
Features	Features in this release of exteNd Composer EDI Connect
Known issues	Known issues with this release of exteNd Composer EDI Connect

What is New

exteNd Composer EDI Connect 5.0 has been enhanced to work with the new Novell exteNd Composer 5.0 and to take advantage of the new and enhanced Actions.

Large Documents: EDI Connect is now able to support very large documents. The connector has been enhanced to breakup an inbound document prior to creating the XML representation so that very large documents can be handled.

Installation notes

As of extend 5 Composer Enterprise Edition 5.0, the Composer Connectors are no longer installed separately. To make installation easier, the Composer Connectors are automatically installed when extend 5 Composer Enterprise Edition 5.0 is installed.

Evaluation licenses are provided for each of the Composer solutions. The evaluation licenses expire 90 days after installation.

Within the Composer designer, you can enable any of the Composer solutions using the Systems Information dialog’s Licenses tab. Navigate to the System Information dialog from the Help / About exteNd Composer menu item. Press the System button and click the Licenses tab.

To enable a Composer solution, simply click its associated ‘Enabled’ checkbox and press OK.

Note: When enabling a Composer Connector, you need to enable each of the Connector’s components. For example, if you want to enable EDI Connect, you need to click the Enabled checkbox associated with EDI, EDIDocumentResource and EDIInterchangeResource and press OK.

When you purchase a full license for a solution, you may edit the solution’s license by clicking the Edit… button and entering the full license.

The same is true on the server side and a console dialog is provided for enabling Composer solutions and editing license keys.

If you experience problems with the installation of EDI Connect, contact Novell technical support for manual installation steps.

Software and hardware minimum requirements

There are no additional hardware or 3^rd party software requirements to install or use any Composer Connector within exteNd Composer. Please see the hardware and software requirements included with both exteNd Composer Server and Developer.

Composer Connectors are engineered to work in conjunction with your exteNd Composer core products and are compatible with the same major version of the core products.

Tutorial

There is no tutorial sent with EDI Connect. Since every environment is unique, the process for setting up the connections may vary. You can deploy the EDI components in the same manner that you do XML Map and JDBC components. Refer to the exteNd Composer tutorial.

Features in exteNd Composer EDI Connect

The following is a brief description of the feature set provided in exteNd Composer EDI Connect. For a more detailed look at the features and functionality please read the exteNd Composer EDI Connect User Guide provided with the software and on the CD-ROM.

EDI Connect is a separately installable product that integrates directly with your existing exteNd Composer installation and provides you with the ability to integrate your business applications running through EDI browser type interfaces to your integration projects.

In addition to the features listed below EDI Connect inherits all the functionality of the exteNd Composer XML Mapping Component Editor. Please see the exteNd Composer Users Guide for more information.

EDI Connect supports bi-directional information exchanges in trading communities that use EDI standard documents as well as XML. Using EDI Connect, trading partners will be able to:

o Receive EDI-formatted inputs, convert them to XML equivalents, integrate that data with back-end systems (via exteNd Composer), and generate EDI formatted outputs. A typical example of where this may be used is an electronic trading hub that may not use EDI internally but must be interoperable with the EDI standards.

o Receive XML-formatted requests, convert them to EDI, integrate them to the existing EDI infrastructures and processes, and generate XML responses from the EDI results. An example of where this may be used is an enterprise with existing EDI processing infrastructure that needs to expand into XML-based information exchanges.

To provide for this type of processing EDI Connect allows the user to:

o Validate the structure and content of EDI transactions (both standard and custom validations).

o Generate standard EDI functional acknowledgements

o Exchange defined partner documents.

o Perform advanced content processing based on specific needs, including exception handling, backend systems integration, logging (e.g., for audit trails), transaction processing, message queuing, etc.

EDI Connect operates using special XML metadata documents that define the structure and format of associated EDI documents. EDI Connect includes metadata for a subset of the X12 and UN/EDIFACT standard document types (X12 and UN/EDIFACT are the leading EDI standards organizations).

Although EDI Connect installs into the exteNd Composer environment like any other exteNd Composer Connector, the EDI Connect UI does not present a typical Native Environment Panel where you drag and drop between XML and the native environment. Instead, the XML metadata described provides EDI Connect with instructions for mapping between EDI and XML formats.

Known issues

This release has the following known issues (workarounds are specified if known):

General

o Pressing Apply in the Map dialog does nothing. The action only takes effect if you press Apply and then press OK. Pressing OK without pressing Apply first, does nothing (as it should).

Animation

o The STOP button does not work during run to the end animation. When running to a break point, first press Pause to stop the animator then press STOP.