Method of translating electronic data interchange documents into other formats and in reverse

A method translate between EDI to and from other data formats such as database tables, flat files, and XML comprising the following steps:

• reading an inbound EDI document one segment at a time using configuration information about the structure of said inbound EDI document and determining for each segment, its status as a header, detail or summary segment;
• parsing each segment and noting its segment identifier;
• determining any associated loop information of each segment, either in the form of controlling loop information in the segment, or that associated with stored configuration information;
• noting any qualifying data with matching values as specified in stored configuration information and further noting any unique number;
• noting, for each segment element;
• the associated data and the defined name of the element;
• noting two additional linking values describing the occurrence of headers and details in the segment file being read;
• storing all data and all noted information of segment in a database table as below;
• translating data from the database table into a desired format based upon the data representation and mapping information stored in the database;
• and
• using a query language to extract data into the form necessary to write a desired translated target.