LANSA Composer's Document types and Document standards definitions describe certain characteristics of transaction documents so that inbound and outbound document processing can recognize them, validate them and invoke the appropriate processing sequence to process them.

A core set of Document types and Document standards definitions are supplied with LANSA Composer for recent EDIFACT and X12 document standards, but you can extend these with your own definitions according to your organization's requirements and trading relationships.

Document Types

Document type definitions identify categories of transaction documents of the same type or format.  This is necessarily an imprecise definition because the nature of the categories can be subject to organisational or application requirements.  However, by way of example, the document types supplied with LANSA Composer include:

• EDI (all EDI types, whether they be EDIFACT or X12 or any of the many versions that apply to each).
• CSV (comma-separated-value formatted text files).
• XML (extensible markup language of any schema).

LANSA Composer's document type definitions serve these main purposes:

1. They provide the link between the transaction document file extension and the LANSA Composer document type definition that matches it (when using the DISCOVER_DOC activity).
2. They provide a soft-coded link to the processing sequence that is used to process inbound or outbound transaction documents of the matching document type (when using the DISCOVER_DOC or DISCOVER_MAP activities).
3. They serve as a logical container or parent for document standard definitions (see below).
4. The document type for a transaction document file can be written to LANSA Composer's transaction document register when using the TXDOC_REGISTER, TXDOC_REGOUTBND, TXDOC_REGOUTX12 and TXDOC_STATUS activities.  This supports categorization and interrogation of the transaction document register by document type using the LANSA Composer Document Manager application.

For more information on creating and maintaining Document Type definition, refer to:

• Document Type Maintenance

Document standards

Document standard definitions belong to a document type and more precisely identify the type of information in transaction documents associated with the document standard.  For example, LANSA Composer supplies document standards belonging to the document type EDI that identify the standard (X12 or EDIFACT) and the particular version of the standard applying to the EDI document.

LANSA Composer's document standard definitions serve these main purposes:

1. For an EDI (X12 or EDIFACT) transaction document, they provide the link between the document standard and version codes contained in the transaction document itself and the LANSA Composer document standard definition that matches it (when using the DISCOVER_EDI activity).
2. For an EDI (X12 or EDIFACT) transaction document, they identify the SEF (standard exchange format) file that is used to validate EDI transaction document files that match the document standard (when using the DISCOVER_EDI activity).

For more information on creating and maintaining Document Standard definitions, refer to:

• Document Standard Maintenance