Hello EDI World!

 

Today I respond to THE most often asked question: feature comparison of Edi support across the various releases of BizTalk Server.

 

The comparison was put together by me along with Microsoft and Partner field representatives with the objective of presenting an unbiased perspective on how the feature set has evolved over various releases.

 

I truly believe that the R2 Edi offering is very robust and ‘enterprise’ ready; the claim is substantiated by a very impressive set of Beta customers including Microsoft IT.

 

As always comments and questions are welcome.

 

Namaste!

 

Suren

 

 

 

Feature Support across versions

BTS

2000/02

BTS 2004/06

BTS 2006 R2

Comment

ISA Segment modification at transaction set

Y

N

Y*

*Supported via creating TransactionSet specific Bts Party

ISA11: US or other standard type

Y

N

Y

 

ISA12: Interchange Control Version

Y

N

Y

 

ISA13: Interchange Control Number (incrementing number)

Y

N

Y

 

ISA15: Test or Production

Y

N

Y

 

GS Segment modification at document/transaction level

Y

N

Y

 

GS sender/receiver IDs allowed to be different than ISA

Y

N

Y

 

Inbound Document IDs different than ISA & GS Outbound IDs

Y

N

Y

 

GS01: Ability to change type of document

Y

N

Y

 

GS04: Date (Ability to change format)

N

N

Y*

*UI to select format as: CCYYMMDD and YYMMDD

GS05: Time (Ability to change format)

N

N

Y*

*UI to select format as: HHMM, HHMMSS and HHMMSSdd

GS06: Change the control number

Y

N

Y

 

GS07: Agency Code

Y

N

Y

 

GS08: Able to put in standards version

Y

N

Y

 

Custom EDI Schemas

Y

N

Y

 

Organization/Party Setting

Y

Y (minimal)

Y*

*Including creating Party based off templates

EDI document routing via document definition

Y

-

Y

 

Automatic 997’s to trading partners

Y

Y

Y*

*Via party specific configuration.

Outbound EDI reliable messaging via 997’s

Y

Y

Y

 

EDIFACT Support

Y

Y (minimal)

Y*

*D93 to D05 per ISO 9735 v4.1

X12 Support

Y

Y (minimal)

Y*

*2040 to 5030

Ability to remove enumerators/codelists

Y

N

Y*

*Via VS/BtsEditor

AS2 Send/Receive

N

N

Y

 

Can migrate BTS02 custom XDR EDI schemas to EDI repository

-

N

N*

* Migration support BTS04 onwards

Outbound Batching (accumulating multiple transaction types in a single transaction)

N

N

Y*

*Supports multiple release paradigms: Schedule, Count and External Triggered.

Inbound Batching – Interchange XML (preserving an incoming ‘batched’ interchange) or Transaction Set XML based off configuration options

N

N

Y*

*This is in addition to supporting inbound-debatching; i.e., splitting interchange into individual Transaction Set Xml.

Interchange and Transaction Set Generation and Validation in Design Time via BTS Editor in VS

N

N

Y

 

TA1 (Technical ACK) Generation and Reconciliation

N

N

Y

 

Optional EDI and XSD Validation flags

N

N

Y

 

Document format/definition at GS level

N

N

Y