What are the real difficulties while testing EDI based applications?

24 September 2020

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is nothing but the computer to computer swapping of business documents in the electronic format in between the partners without any need of human involvement.

EDI allows you to swap multiple documents like purchase orders, invoices, and many more.

It also allows many companies over the countries to swap business documents electronically.

Advantages of EDI

1. EDI is used in large as well as small companies and it offers many benefits.
   Ex. Reducing cost, Faster speed, it improves the efficiency of the business and makes documents visible during the swapping.
2. Also testing EDI based applications is the biggest challenge nowadays.

Difficulties during EDI-Testing

1. Multiplayer validations of transaction
2. Understanding of formats in between the partners.
3. Validating complex and hierarchical data
4. Ensuring EDI compliance
5. Tedious and time-consuming in Manual testing
6. Connection legacy system with modern applications

Multiplayer validations of transaction:

• While testing EDI-based applications, for each transaction and validating their result manually can cause errors.
• This becomes more tedious when the testers fail to execute all test cases accurately.
• This often involves managing hierarchical and complex data sets and performing multi-layer testing or validation of each transaction.

Understanding of formats in between the partners:

• There are many file formats used in EDI-based applications.
  Ex. EDIFACT, X12, CSV, AS2, TRADACOMS, and much more.
• Many times, the file formats that are used by an enterprise might not be understood by its partners’ systems or vice versa.
• In this case, the enterprise or partners need a solution that validates data in various formats, which will be a staggering task.

Tedious and time-consuming in Manual testing:

• EDI-based application testing needs lots of man work as it takes time for the complex nature of the workflow that is used.
• It is a very tedious job to handle testing EDI based applications manually.

Ensuring EDI compliance:

• Translating EDI files from one or multiple trading partner’s formats to a standard format that is used by the receiver is one of the biggest difficulties.
• Meeting all the trading partner’s EDI requirements is essential for an organization to become EDI compliant.

Validating complex and hierarchical data:

• The complexity of the networks increases with the more partners, manufacturers, and suppliers coordinates as part of its trading.
• All these partners and enterprises need to connect with each other and have to deal with the multiple challenges that occur during information exchange transactions.

Connection legacy system with modern applications:

• If an enterprise is using a legacy system or an application, it may have the following difficulties.
  • More related legacy programming skills are required to support the legacy system.
  • The reports and data generated from the legacy system are especially that are in various formats are difficult to interpret.

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