In this post I would like to announce the release of the Edi2Xml PDI plugin. It will convert a string field with edifact data to an XML text, with one tag per segment, containing the fields and values as child tags. This makes the edifact data more accessible, as the XML can be queried using the “Get Data From XML” step.
The plugin simplifies reliable extraction of information from edifact-encoded data. So getting from this:
UNA:+.? ' UNB+UNOC:4+STYLUSSTUDIO:1+DATADIRECT:1+20051107:1159+6002' UNH+SSDD1+ORDERS:D:03B:UN:EAN008' BGM+220+BKOD99+9' DTM+137:20051107:102' NAD+BY+5412345000176::9' NAD+SU+4012345000094::9' LIN+1+1+0764569104:IB' QTY+1:25' FTX+AFM+1++XPath 2.0 Programmer?'s Reference' LIN+2+1+0596520123:IB' QTY+1:6' FTX+AFM+1++Version Control with Git' LIN+3+1+1884777716:IB' QTY+1:16' FTX+AFM+1++Server-Based Java Programming' LIN+4+1+0596006756:IB' QTY+1:10' FTX+AFM+1++Enterprise Service Bus' UNS+S' CNT+2:4' UNT+22+SSDD1' UNZ+1+6002'
… to here:
has become a bit simpler now in PDI.
Please see the plugin page for the download package (includes sources), introduction and sample transformation.
Comments and feedback are welcome, as always 
Cheers
Slawo
Nice. Though I’ve not had the “pleasure” to use EDI files in a very long time, as such, would you care to explain how the original schema/format is structured (may be annotate it)? The simplified output of course does not require any explanation.
Thanks.
Sean
Hi Slawo,
OK. I missed the link you’ve provided in the other page though it looks pretty daunting at 11PM. May be tomorrow…
Sean
Hey Sean,
the EDI message format is indeed not trivial. I am assuming that whatever messages PDI users have to deal with, they have the documentation for. After converting the message to XML, the fields become more accessible by using XPath. But semantics still needs to be figured out from the reference doc for the message in question.
Cheers
Slawo
Hi Slawo,
Are there any plans to provide a step for the other direction xml to edi?
Gunter
Hey Gunter,
I would imagine that it would make some sense to have some generic text template step to convert rows (or batches of rows) to text, but a generic XML to EDI mapping is the application area of specialized tools like http://www.stylusstudio.com/
Cheers
Slawo