Subscribe to keep this site alive! Under new management but as always, still 100% FREE. Anyone with the IBM i is a friend of ours.
The Challenge: "The may be an interchange header but it failed validation and was discarded"
The Analysis: This error happens during receiving. Or this might be the error your trading partner is getting.
The ISA is the first segment of any X12 document:
a. It is the only segment that is of fixed length (there is a reason why).
b. Even though data is read positionally, there are still element separators.
c. The element separator, position 104 separates the test indicator and itself.
d. Position 105 is the sub element separator.
e. Position 106 is the segment separator.
f. The first thing the software looks for is position 106, So it will be able to further check the other segments.
The Solution: The message is letting us know that the software thinks is might ("may" as the operative word) be an ISA, but not quite.
Here are more common problems:
a. The ISA segment is less than 106.
b. There is consistently a CR/LF after each and every segment - making it a 3 byte segment separator.
c. A separator character is used multiple times; example position 105 (sub-element) and 106 (segment) of the ISA are both tildes ("~").
d. Count the lengths of fields within the element separator. The sender and receiver IDs are both 15 in length. The total of the ISA might be 106, but the sending might be shorter by 1, and the receiver longer by 1.
Note: When line Feed (Hex '25') is the segment separator, it may look like that the ISA is only 105 long, but it isn't. The Line Feed is present as a segment separator, presenting the document in the IFS/Desktop as unwrapped. But it will be wrapped in the communication session.
.