The ADO integrated driver for ABC:

• Provides a consistent way to access data on a customer's existing internal database systems such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or an AS/400 file store. The database does not need to reside on the same machine as ABC, but on any machine within the customer's network, including UNIX servers. The only requirement is that the database must provide ADO support.

• The ADO driver is configured using a vbs style script to allow for easy configuration of specific user requirements. As the script uses standard SQL statements, the customer's database administrator could maintain the script to ensure compliance with their internal database standards and procedures.

• Allows ABC to access the users' database directly when creating outbound documents such as orders, removing the need to create intermediate files. ABC would execute the ADO script to access the SQL database, extract any data which was ready for processing, transform the data from the internal SQL data format into the EDI or XML syntax as required by the recipient and then update the SQL database to mark the data as being processed. This allows for the very rapid processing of company data as may be required for ‘time critical applications’.

• The ADO script to access any table in the SQL environment which may be needed to support the creation of the EDI document, such as retrieving delivery locations, addresses or product details. This eliminates the need to hold duplicate data specifically for the EDI transformation process.

• Likewise for inbound processing, once the EDI file has been received into ABC the transformation process will update the SQL database directly allowing the company’s internal applications immediate access to the data, as is required in any enterprise environment.