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QlikView and EDIFACT B2B format files. Does anyone have used this as a source?

Hi.

I wonder if any of you guys have ever tried to use EDIFACT B2B format files as source for a QVW model?

Currently I have one client who wants to do this. Which column-separator did you use if any?

Cheers!

4 Replies
prieper
Master II
Master II

I do not know your specific format, but EDIFACT-messages are typically one line without linefeed. Each field has a keyword preceeding (and endless numbers of ++++). Reading a file should work with SUBFIELD-function:
SUBFIELD with two variables in order to separate the records
SUBFIELD with three variables in order to separate the fields in each record, which you wish to see.

HTH
Peter

Not applicable
Author

Hi Peter. THnks for your answer it really help me to clarify it.

The problem here resides in the fact that the source files not always have the same fields so it's kind of tricky.

But your answer help me a lot.

cheers!

bengan74
Contributor III
Contributor III

I bump this question more than five years later...

Is there any way to use EDIFACT files to import in Qlikview?

Brg Johan

Anonymous
Not applicable
Author

Another three years later, I happen to come across this thread.

Yep. I have kind of been there a couple of years ago. I was mainly interested in delays due to message rejections.

Call it basic process mining if you want. It was not exactly EDIFACT, but a very close dialect.

I scripted myself kind of a parser in Qlikview for extracting the data. It was a couple of hundred files, so the first loop was loading the raw file content. If your job is just plain extract&process, it is a bit of tedious work getting the loops right to crunch the segments into temporary tables, then to eventually crack the temp data into the appropriate fields. I used a seperate file with the segment names to loop through and write it into the respective tables. There sure are more elegant ways to do this. In my case, I went digging max. five levels deep, might be more in your case. But you can use these base data to decode the field contents on the go.

However, it is often not that simple.

First thing you would want to know is whether all your files are valid, i.e. have been transmitted successfully. If you get the raw files, this may not be the case, but please check the specs. If your customer provides you with an extract of messages that needs no validation, thats a different story. In the project I was in, this was not the case, so I had to match error messages to sort out rejected files. Obviously, to do so, you need to know both sides of the story, i.e. need to match received and sent files. And you really need to know the specs.

Next thing you need to ask is which of the messages you extract are valid and sort out those, which were rejected.

Again: Specs. Up and down.

I found it quite a hairy thing to extract EDIFACT-data. If you do not validate it thoroughly, you may end up with a lot of data salad and an angry client.

But as I have a bit of hands on experience in this field, you are welcome to drop me a line.

Would be glad to help & like to hear about whats going on in this field.