In corporate computer environments, there is the need to transfer data between computer systems. Integration and communication between heterogeneous systems is a must.

The ISIS Warehouse Management System provides a generic interface engine which allows for the transfer of warehouse related data. This interface can be used both in the initial setup of ISIS and as an ongoing interface to other systems.

The interface is designed to work as detailed below:

1. Data is transferred from an external system.
2. The data is reformatted to suit ISIS and the data is inserted into the ISIS inbound tables.
3. The incoming data is processed.
4. Data is transferred to the outgoing interface tables once internal ISIS processing is completed.
5. Data is extracted from the outgoing interface tables and reformat to suite the external system
6. The data is then sent to the external system.

When the available data formats are simplistic flat files as commonly used by most legacy systems, an inbuilt data definition tool can be used to translate field by field from the external to the internal. This technique is available for direct implementation by the ISIS end user and is included in the ISIS licence fees. This technique requires a file based data transfer mechanism.

When the external format data is more structured or requires more complex processing, a separate mapping module is developed and employed. We have several existing modules for commonly employed external systems. The immediately available list includes SAP iDoc format, EANCOM compliant formats and “JD Edwards” format.

The data transfer can be accomplished by file transfer methods such as FTP or e-mail. Also available is a message passing technique using the IBM MQ-WebSeries product. Other data exchange techniques can be developed at request.