Electronic Data Interchange
Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments are EDI documents created as a result of verification of a subject document.  They are normally created by the recipient on receiving a document sent by a sender.  The document sent by the sender is the subject document.  Acknowledgments created automatically by Framework EDI (FREDI) can report on these 2 types of errors:

• Situational Errors.  These are errors from failed conditional statements when specific data is encountered in the document.  The conditional statement are semantic rules that are provided by the implementation guideline when the EDI document is being verified.  Note that semantic rules are not syntax rules that govern the presence or absence of a data element depending on the presence or absence of other data elements in the same data segment or composite element. (Failures discovered in syntax rules are actually reported as syntax errors.)  In contrast, semantic rules govern the presence or absence of objects in a transaction set based on data throughout the transaction set.  Situational errors are dynamic in nature, occurring only on certain conditions, and the semantic rules can vary by implementation guideline.
  
• Syntax errors.  These are errors due to incorrect syntax application of data in the document.  The rules that govern the application of data is specified by the controlling agency  (ASC/X12 or UN/EDIFACT) and only vary by each published version that the agency releases -- not by implementation guideline.  The syntax check involves verifying data correctly following the syntax defined for it, such as its data type, required length, syntax rules, structure, etc.  Syntactical errors are static and occur as a result of failure to comply to the syntax rules of the EDI standard as a whole.

Acknowledgments are EDI documents, and they MUST NOT be verified as subject documents to produce more acknowledgments, otherwise an endless cycle of verification will ensue.  When FREDI scans the subject document for errors, it is traversed sequentially from top to bottom.  This is natural because the EDI document is a hierarchical structure.  Furthermore, the reporting levels of the acknowledgment (AK1, AK2, etc. for ASC/X12, or UCF, UCM, etc. for UN/EDIFACT) follows the hierarchical order of the subject document.  Thus, as Framework EDI (FREDI) traverses the subject document, a reporting level is created in the acknowledgment that corresponds to the level that is encountered in the subject document.

As data segments are created, their data elements are assigned default values as well as values obtained from the subject document.  The values assigned are by no means permanent and they can be modified where appropriate before transmitting the acknowledgment to the sender of the subject document. 

See Samples Sample 997 EDI File with rejected Transaction Set (ASC/X12) Sample X12 997 EDI File with accepted Transaction Set (ASC/X12) Accepted Acknowledgment CONTRL file (UN/EDIFACT) Accepted Acknowledgment CONTRL with Group (UN/EDIFACT)

See Also

• Reporting Syntactical Errors for ASC/X12
• Reporting Syntactical Errors for UN/EDIFACT
• Electronic Data Interchange