Database Communication

Bots can read and write from a database. See plugin demo_databasecommunication on the bots sourceforge site.

Discussion: Direct Database Communication or Not

In most edi setups there is no direct database communication, but an intermediate file is used:

• Inbound edi: bots translates edi files to your import format
• Outbound edi: the export files of your application are translated by bots to the wished edi format.

Reasons to set up edi using an intermediate file:

• It is better to do the import/export with the tools you are familiar with, and not to use a new tool (knowledge, maintenance).
• Different edi partners do use different standards (dialects of the standards, different interpretations, different countries, different sectors, edi standards are not that good). Try to use one import/export format; let the edi software handle the differences between partners.

Reasons to use direct database format:

• Import/Exports are very simple/straightforward
• Your system does not (yet) have good functionality for handling the incoming edi data. Example: receive sales reports, but what to do with this? This data is quite simple, just import this in one (new) table. The users can query this table for information.

Inbound edi (write to database)

• Translation rule should be to edi-type db
• In the mapping script: out.root should be a python object (dict, list, class, etc); this object is passed to the actual database connector.
• Outgoing channel should be type ‘db’.
• Use a communication script for the outgoing channel usersys/communicationscripts/channelname.py. This communication script does the actual communication with the database.

• In the communication script should be 3 functions:

  • connect - build database connection.
  • out-communicate - put the data in the database using the data as received from the mapping script.
  • disconnect - close database connection.

• Use the database connector as needed, eg: python provides by default the sqlite3 connector, mysql-Python as MySQL database connector, psycopg2 as PostgreSQL database connector, etc

Outbound edi (read from database)

• Incoming channel should be type db.
• Use a communication script for the incoming channel usersys/communicationscripts/channelname.py. This communication script does the actual communication with the database.

• In the communication script should be 3 functions:

  • connect - build database connection.
  • incommunicate - fetch the data from the database, send it to the mapping script.
  • disconnect - close database connection.

• Use the database connector as needed, eg: python provides by default the sqlite3 connector, mysql-Python as MySQL database connector, psycopg2 as PostgreSQL database connector, etc
• Translation should be from edi-type db
• In the mapping script: inn.root is the data as received from the database connector.

Note

The data passed from the communication-script can be any python object (eg dict, list). If a list (or tuple) is return from the communication script, bots passes each member of the list as a separate edi-message to the mapping script.