Bots EDI-connects your company with your trading partners. Bots takes care of all the needed communications, translations, protocols and standards.

Bots is an open source EDI translator. Any-to-any translation, supported data formats: edifact, X12, XML, SAP idoc, flat-file, CSV, JSON, etc.
Bots is highly configurable using python scripts.
Bots has plugins for predefined EDI configurations.

Bots has three main functions:

• "Any-to-any-format" data conversions.


• (Secure) communications.


• Manage and overview EDI data flows.

More details in the rest of this page.


EDI data formats:

• EDIFACT.


• X12.


• XML.


• Fixed records/flat file/ASCII.


• CSV-format (excel).


• SAP idoc.


• Readable/printable format ('EDI-fax').


• Code conversion, e.g. EAN/UCC-numbers to internal article
  number.

Bots translates any of these formats to any other of these formats.

This makes Bots very flexible.

Communications:

• Email (POP3 and SMTP).


• Secure email (POP3 and SMTP over SSL/TLS).


• FTP.


• File I/O.


• VAN's: supported are now




• IPMail (Btinfonet).


• InterCommit.




• X400: not direct. Advise: use VAN's like IPMail or
  InterCommit for transparant connection to X400. Better and less
  expensive.


• AS/2: not direct. Advise: use VAN's like IPMail or
  InterCommit. Better, and less expensive.

Manage EDI:

• View: summary of each 'run'.


• View: edi-files received, edi-files sent.


• View: details of processing an edi-files.


• Resend and rereceive edi-files.


• Receive (email) reports in case of errors.

Flexible deployment:

• Bots is web based. Use bots-monitor from any workstation.


• Communication and translation can be started by user or be scheduled.


• Get a report by mail if errors have shown up in communication or translation.

Plugins for distributable configuration:

• Easy installation of standard EDI scenarios.


• Distribution and sharing of configurations by e.g. bots-users, buyers, ERP suppliers or EDI communities.

Technical info:

• Highly configurable; advanced configuration using scripting.


• Query EDI messages in mapping scripts to retrieve and place content.
  Think of X-path or SQL, but tailored for EDI. Is very powerful.


• Incoming messages are converted to a tree structure (think DOM for XML).
  Outward messages are also build as a tree structure and serialized to an EDI-message.


• Programming language: Python.


• Python is used for configuration (mapping scripts, grammars, route scripts etc); not a self-invented toy language.
  One advantage is to use syntax highlighting and python syntax check in a editor.
  
• Fully integrated Unicode (character sets).


• Platform independent; known to work on Windows and Linux.
  Should be usable on any platform that runs Python.
  Bots uses some external modules; unknown is on which platforms these modules run - check this for your platform.
  Some modules have C extensions.


• Scalable: different parts of Bots can run on different computers; Bots supports databases suited for heavy loads.


• Supported databases: SQLite (default), MySQL, PostgreSQL.