Using SAP IDoc Files

SAP IDocs consist of fields of data grouped into segments. The segments themselves have a hierarchical relationship to each other.

A physician's prescription of a drug for a hospital patient needs to get to the hospital's pharmacy. This could be done by means of an IDoc sent from a bedside program to a program in the pharmacy. Suppose the IDoc has a hierarchy of four levels of segments:

Patient Name: Johnson

Diagnosis: croup

Diagnosis: tibia fracture

Visit Type: admission

Drug: codeine

Drug: amidol

Visit Type: followup

Drug: naprosin

Level 1: Contains data that remains constant for years at a time, such as patient name and address.

Level 2: Contains data that remains constant through a given illness, but changes from illness-to-illness; such as primary physician and diagnosis. There can be more than one second level segment for a given patient.

Level 3: Contains data that remains constant through a particular visit to the hospital, but changes from visit-to-visit; such as visit type (admission or followup) and attending physician. A patient may have more than one hospital visit during an illness.

Level 4: Contains data that tends to change from prescription-to-prescription; such as prescribing physician, medicine, and dosage. More than one medicine may be ordered for a given patient on a given visit.

Integrating With SAP

IDoc Types and Segment Definitions

Converting IDoc Hierarchical Data to Flat Records

Since data in a child segment is always associated with the data in its parent, any non-branching path through a tree in an IDoc, from a top node to a bottom node can be thought of as a record just like the records in a table-oriented database.

Example

Consider the following data hierarchy, in which each segment has just one field for simplicity:

Patient Name: Johnson
	Diagnosis: croup
	Diagnosis: tibia fracture
		Visit Type: admission
			Drug: codeine
			Drug: amidol
		Visit Type: followup
			Drug: naprosin

Patient Johnson has been treated at different times for croup and a tibia fracture. (Details of the first illness are not depicted.) In the first hospital visit for the fracture the doctor prescribed codeine and amidol. In the second, the doctor ordered naprosin.

The path through the tibia fracture and the prescription for naprosin can be collapsed into a flat record like this:

Patient Name	Diagnosis	Visit	Drug
Johnson	tibia fracture	followup	naprosin

The two other complete paths could be collapsed into these records:

Patient Name	Diagnosis	Visit	Drug
Johnson	tibia fracture	admission	codeine
Johnson	tibia fracture	admission	amidol

When BarTender reads IDocs, it will collapse data trees into flat records. You will select the fields from these records that you need in objects on your template.

Master Segment

You will not always need a item to print for every possible record that could be produced from the data hierarchy in an IDoc. BarTender can be configured at print-time to select only some records, but some documents that draw data from an IDoc will not need every possible record even in the typical case. BarTender uses the concept of the Master Segment to help you produce just the records you need from an IDoc.

The Master Segment is the segment whose data is the focus of interest with respect to your design needs. BarTender will produce one record for every segment in the IDoc that you designate as the Master Segment.

Example

Consider the data tree shown in the introductory example. If the hospital needs a label for every drug prescribed, then it would set the Master Segment at the fourth level. This would cause BarTender to produce three records:

Patient Name	Diagnosis	Visit	Drug
Johnson	tibia fracture	admission	codeine
Johnson	tibia fracture	admission	amidol
Johnson	tibia fracture	followup	naprosin

Suppose the hospital keeps separate files for every patient visit and wants to generate labels to be used for file folders. Only one label is needed for each visit. So the Master Segment is set to the third level, and BarTender produces two records:

Patient Name	Diagnosis	Visit	Drug
Johnson	tibia fracture	admission	codeine amidol
Johnson	tibia fracture	followup	naprosin

In the first of these records, BarTender included the field Drug from the level below the Master Segment and concatenated all the data from segments at that lower level. For more information, refer to Repeating Segment Rules dialog.

Because BarTender will produce one record for every instance of the Master Segment, completing the following statement may help you determine what to use as your Master Segment:

In the typical run of items built from this IDoc, I'll want one item to print for every _____________.

In the preceding example, if "visit" fills the blank, then the third level would probably be the best choice of Master Segment level, but if "prescribed drug" fills the blank, then the fourth level would probably be a better choice.

Using SAP IDoc Files

Integrating With SAP

Working with IDoc Files

IDoc Types and Segment Definitions

Parser Files

Converting IDoc Hierarchical Data to Flat Records

Master Segment

SAP IDOC Definition File