Key Features
Single Source Authoring and Publishing
With SpecBuilder’s single, comprehensive and intuitive user interface, one can either create a
specification from scratch or create one by modifying or annotating one of the 18,000 message templates
provided with the product out of the box. In either case, the user is provided up to 10 free-form user
notes so that they can capture all the requirements in one place and in the context of the message structure
definition. SpecBuilder includes support for custom business rules, so all rules related to the message content
can be stored in one easily accessible and distributed document.
Once the specification authoring step is completed the content is maintained in a machine accessible structured format
allowing it to be used to solve many different problems, including publishing. Publishing the message specification
is a key step in ensuring a smooth EDI project implementation. Through publishing, all parties — internal business,
technical, QA and external business, technical and QA analysts — can all be on the same page. Whether the data
exchange is with one large trading partner or with thousands of supplier trading partners, publishing allows everyone
to know what is the agreed upon message that is to be exchanged and what is expected of each party.
Ensure data compliance
With the specification in a machine-readable format, data files can now be validated against the specification in SpecBuilder.
Using SpecBuilder, you may now test immediately after the specification authoring is completed. It is no longer necessary to
wait until the production system comes on line to test whether or not your specification is correct, or whether the data itself
is correct. This is useful for many purposes:
- You can immediately verify if the specification structure and rules are correct by testing data files and determining
if there are any inconsistencies in the specification. They can then be corrected in the same user interface before final
publication of the specification. This avoids costly problems which are often not discovered until the end of the project.
- You can use data validation to test data files sent to you by your trading partners, so even if your system is not
completely ready for processing files, you can give intelligent feedback to your trading partners.
- Alternatively, if you are sending data files and your trading partner is not ready to receive them, you can test
them against the specification and make the necessary corrections. This way SpecBuilder provides a check-and-balance
mechanism to your production system as an independent system to verify that data is fully compliant with the specification.
Take the headache (and expense) out of testing
Complete system testing for a B2B system is complex and time consuming. With the specification in a structured
machine readable format, SpecBuilder can help automate creation of various test data files to represent real-life
business scenarios. The test scenarios can be for a unit test, such as a single transaction in which the data is
set to a future date to see how your B2B system and back-end system respond. Or generate very large test data files
or many small real-time data files to stress test your B2B and back-end system.
Accelerate implementation with third-party products
“Create once, leverage many-times” is at the core of SpecBuilder. In keeping with this principle,
SpecBuilder comes with many import/export routines. The export routines allow the specification from SpecBuilder
to be exported to other third party products such as translators. This allows re-use of the work done in SpecBuilder
directly for use with these products.
Lower the cost of changes to your requirements
Today, change is the only constant in business. As business processes are further optimized and new versions of standards
are released, existing EDI implementations will need to be changed to reflect the changing business environments. With the
SpecBuilder toolset, keeping up with these changes can be done in a timely and cost-effective manner. By leveraging the structured
specification in SpecBuilder, two specifications can easily be compared for gap-analysis and changes can be migrated automatically or
manually from one version to another, for complete control.
SpecBuilder Migrator Side-by-Side Comparison Module
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