I have a manuscript for a scientific publication, the data, and the scripts used to generate the result figures and tables. How can I wrap these three in an executable research compendium, so that others can easily reproduce the computational steps my study?
The best way is to use our online ERC user interface at
https://o2r.uni-muenster.de/. There you can upload a zip file of your workspace, which must include an R Markdown file that executes your workflow. You may choose to start you analysis from raw data or, if that takes very long, based on some pre-processed data.
The UI has a self-explanatory creation wizard guiding you through the process. Note that all your files will be publicly available on our demo server after your creation, and that you will need an ORCID account to log-in. New registrations are manually checked before you are allowed to upload any files, so please let us know if you're in a hurry.
You can also "manually" create an ERC as described in this guide that is part of the ERC technical specification.
For my bachelor´s degree I got the task to implement a B2B communication for an ERP system developed by the company I currently work for. Because it should also be able to communicate with other software I consider using EDI messages (EDIFACT) or maybe cXML. What is the best way to approach this task.
I had the idea to translate the EDIFACT message into xml defined by one xsd describing every EDIFACT message.
Then I would write the xml into the database or to business objects using a selfwritten mapper.
For writing EDIFACT messages I just use the same methods the other way round.
I thought using XML transformation first would be easier for the mapping and gives the opportunity using the xml for other purposes like writing other edi formats.
The other idea is to just use cXML and map it.
What is the best approach to this task?
You're essentially designing and implementing a public facing API for the ERP, so you need to consider security, reliability, non-repudiation, impact on business process under normal and abnormal conditions.
You'll also need to consider (ask) what sorts of information your customers will need to exchange with their partners (master data, transactional messages, financial information, etc).
I'd start by looking at the most commonly exchanged messages in the industry most representative of the ERPs users - look for message content and structure.
whether you choose to use EDIFACT, ANSI X12, cXML, XCBL, GS1XML, ebXML or something else is less important than good documentation and flexibility. it's unlikely that your choice will be exactly what any of your customers need without further transformation. you don't want to invent a new any to any transformation tool, and you probably don't even want to bundle an existing one.
Hope this is the right area for this question, it's a general "Should I" more than a "How do I".
We currently have a commercial software that offers, among many other things, a mail merge functionality to MS Word. However, we're looking for options to remove MS software, and the licensing fees that come with it. I've used openoffice personally in years past, and it seems to be a strong contender.
The mail merge functionality we offer is generally used to create letters or envelopes, and while often fairly simple, does contain some very advanced "hacks" like being able to merge rich text content and images (we save these to temporary files, put the path into a special tag in Word, then do post-merge processing on the Word document to bring them in). I need to have 100% functionality coverage to be able to switch products. Has anyone done any similar kind of processing on the document post-merge?
I see in the docs that there are Automation capabilities offered (this is how our current MS Word implementation works), and there's also an API reference. Has anyone used the two of these and have any recommendations one way or the other for mail merge?
Any of these documents could also be chosen to be emailed instead of just generated for printing. I know there's no email client in OpenOffice - does it use the locally installed mail client to send? Is there a way to send without a locally installed mail client? It obviously won't help to remove MS Word but still need Outlook/etc.
Obviously I'm going to need to spend some time doing serious prototypes, I was hoping to get some confirmation ahead of time whether it's possible or definitely not possible to do any of these things.
Thanks!
Its been a while since Ive had to write what amounts to a custom format edi processor. The last time I wrote one, I was an AS/400 programmer (not iSeries to give you a timeframe). It was pretty easy, I built a structure and inspected the record type column and began processing based on the fix positions of data and record type.
Fast forward to 2012 and I have almost exactly the same requirements except I no longer have an AS/400 to make it easy.
For brevity, the first 2 columns contain a record type and the structure is based on that type. Any suggestion on how to best handle this in c# on a web server?
Some options I have considered are filehelpers and SSIS. I have full control over the environment so I can do pretty much anything that makes sense.
You can try using the Multi Record engine option of FileHelpers
http://www.filehelpers.com/example_multirecords.html
You must define as many record classes as different kind of lines you have and later provide a delegate that lets FileHelpers choose the right one.
There is also a Master Detail engine:
http://www.filehelpers.com/example_masterdetail.html
Last version of the library: http://teamcity.codebetter.com/viewLog.html?buildId=51642&tab=artifacts&buildTypeId=bt66
Why is this archaic format still used in the face of easier-to-use technologies? Does it provide some benefit that I'm not seeing? It seems that a large amount of vendors still provide data only in this format, instead of something more manageable and easier to use such as XML; at the least it would make sense to me to offer both formats.
Also, what are some good ways to deal with and utilize EDI when you have no other choice but to use it? Something like BizTalk is out of the question as it's far too expensive. Are there any free/open source applications that make EDI easier to work with?
EDI is not that hard to understand once you familiarize yourself with the delimiters it uses. You might ask yourself as well why anyone would still be using CSV or tab-delimited data.
The answer is probably that those formats are "domain specific languages" defined by committee and standardized in a certain industry, and that a lot of money has already been invested in supporting those formats. Where's the business case to throw that all out again?
One word, Inertia. Developing the EDI formats by committee between various companys and organisations with different agendas was a nightmare (sad to say I have been there).
Asking them to abandon these with yet another round of committees agreeing web service API standards is going to take even longer, how do you sell the idea of replacing one electronic format with another to a non-technical board? What possible busness advantage does it give them. Originally the benefits of electronic exchange were clear but replace one with another is not. We're talking really big companies here.
You may be interested in the following project:
http://bots.sourceforge.net/en/index.shtml
Google code archive
A little information for all interested. EDI is basically a design by committee data exchange format that not only set out rules for data formatting (like XML), but also set out to define each document that could possibly ever be sent between 2 companies. So for any piece of data that could be exchanged between companies they came up with an exact definition of what was supposed to be in each of these documents. Of course, nobody could foresee every piece of data that 2 companies would want to exchange. So you end up with companies using fields that were defined for 1 thing, being used for some other piece of information.
What you ended up with, is an extremely convoluted data format, in which many people using it don't follow the standards, because they need to send custom information, which the standard doesn't account for. So in the end, you still need to talk to each company you want to deal with, and find out all the little idiosyncrasies of their implementation, just as you would have to do if you went to someone with a custom XML interface. Except that in the case of EDI, the format is hard to parse and even harder to write well, so you end up doing a whole bunch of work just to send a document, when doing the same kind of think with having a custom XML solution would have resulted in many times less problems.
And switching to XML would give you what - a slightly easier to debug line format?
Generally you set it up and leave it, there isn't a lot of need to play with the raw EDI feed, certainly not enough to abandon the standard and start again.
There are lots of standards, like FAX that could be made more readable but no real pressing need to change them.
Because it's a formally established Standard (in fact a very large and comprehensive set of standards). And that's one of the claimed benefits of a standard - you won't need to change anything for a long time.
And to change it, it takes agreement between two or more (often thousands and thousands more) trading partners (including maybe all of your competitors) to agree.
EDI formats have much higher signal-to-noise ratios (because they were designed back when that was considered important.) Someone who knows and understands EDI will look at your XML and say "Where's the beef (data)?"
Very few developers write their own parsers. There are many good mappers available (and many legacy and enterprise apps come with them built in). So there's lots of relief available for your pain (including at least one Open Source app on SourceForge).
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Most of these organisations are processing vast amounts of data using EDI, and aren't about to change to something more modern without a compelling reason. And making things easy for third-party developers doesn't usually qualify, sad to say.
IMHO there are several problems with EDIFACT.
It is not easy to parse or generate an Object model from it. This is probably not a big problem anymore as there are now good system around that do it for you e.g. smooks.org
It is not easy to read. You get used to but XML is a lot easier to read
Validation isn't that easy (compare that to validating XML)
There are far too many different versions and flavours, D95B, D96B, D00A, D00B etc.
But I think the biggest problem is that everyone is using the standards differently. They use the same 'format' but the fields are defined differently. We use EDIFACT to send and receive messages from Container Terminals and they all have slight differences. They would e.g. all use a D95B CODECO but for some terminals a certain segment is mandatory while for another it is optional or even not allowed to be there. Then you have segments that are used the same but the content in it is different.
So to summarise it: It is a pain in the neck.
EDI is a very compact format and is often used to keep bandwidth usage in data exchanges as small as possible. The German customs offices for example use it in their ATLAS system to exchange a very high volume of data every day.
It is hard to parse and hard to read, but if the size of the resulting data matters, it can be a good choice and is supported by most of the bigger business applications.
Legacy Support
EDI is prolific in many industries. It would be prohibitively expensive to replace an already-working technology with a newer one.
Consider this, Walmart uses EDI to communicate with its vendors, stores, distribution chain, etc. I'm guessing they deal with tenss of thousands of vendors. Every one of them has sunk thousands of dollars into EDI technology. If Walmart decided to switch over to XML, its a decision that affects thousands of companies, not just Walmart.
This is true for any EDI user. After all, it's a standard used between trading partners.
I agree, EDI is a pain to work with. But 'back in the day', that's all we had.
Edifact is one of the best standards when it comes down to document interchange.
Most problems come from tradingpartners sending non standardized documents.
Yes it's a bit odd format and is tedious to work with if you don't know the ins and outs but that goes for XML as well.
You really want XML over Edifact? Look at the bloated, hard to read XML standards peppol (pan-european public procurement online) is working on.
Yes it's working nice and dandy if you don't have any errors in the systems, troubleshooting edifacts is so much easier once you get used to the format than troubleshooting UBL documents.
You say you have $0.00 to use on the project?
You really should look into the amount of manual work done in your company and the costsavings EDI can offer some cost benefit analysis can be mighty handy.
What types of information can be exchanged via EDI?
A variety of types of business information exchange is available via EDI including:
-•Booking information
-•Bill of Lading information
-•Invoicing
-•Electronic Funds Transfer
-•Arrival Notice Information
-•Shipment Status Information
How would choosing EDI benefit my company?
-•It streamlines the communications process between you and APL
-•It eliminates the need to rekey data, thus eliminating errors and the need to recheck information
-•It eliminates paper handling and the need for document storage
-•It improves the turntime and the accuracy of your data
-•It eliminates the need for faxing
One solution, although it will cost you, is to go to a company like ADX, which has tools you can use to convert EDI formats to more pleasing formats like CSV. Depending on the volume and type of transactions you are doing, this can be both affordable and a lot less stressful. I've used their products in the past, and while they are a bit of work to set up, they do work quite well, and are very stable. Because of the history of EDI, you could probably find hundreds of other companies that offer similar services.
EDI has been around since before XML. Apart from the fact that two parties can pre-negotiate the EDI format that works for them both you must also consider the part of the VAN (value added network.)
In some cases the VAN performs validation of the message, or even reads the message and performs actions on it, such as copying it to additional parties based on its content.
The only reason really to use EDI is because "that's the way it's always been done", and therefore there is a lot of existing infrastructure around to support it. Why switch to XML when there is no need? And how is to say XML wont be replaced by JSON which will then be replaced by something else?
Another reason is that being business messages such as order. invoices, credit notes etc there is a lot of financial worth in the transactions and they need to be secure but perhaps more importantly they need have end to end validation and verification as well as non repudiation.
For example i send you an order for 1/2 million Euros worth of goods, you send me the goods, then i "lose" the order information and tell you i am not paying. The combination of the standards and the VANS make this almost impossible or at least with so much of an audit trail that it the problems could be tracked. This is why the "Oh let use xml and the internet instead of EDIFACT and the VANS" tend to fail. As someone els answered, Inertia, but it is an inertia founded in a stable effective, secure, reliable and well understood system.
Doing it on the cheap is not always an option.
If it is any consolation when i first implemented EDI in '87 there was virtually no software around and so i got the Interbridge tables and wrote my own parser for the UK TRADACOMS standard using Cognos software on and HP Mini, and it worked fine. Assuming you are trading with other EDI partners the cost probably comes at the point of needing to use a VAN.
I've used EDI (ANSI X12 and EDIFACT) in 2 projects about Maritime Transport Logistics and found them to be very useful since most Ocean Carriers and Trading Partners accept them as the standard way of communication between their different systems.
So EDI format is still used and will continue to be used since it's a stablished standard and thousand companies have developed systems around them, and replacing them is a really big deal.
I've had to use EDI as well and I agree. We used BizTalk to map it which worked well. Many system are built on EDI(well before XML).