About SAP IDoc Files

SAP Intermediate Document (IDoc) files consist of fields of data that are grouped into segments. The segments themselves have a hierarchical relationship to each other.

A physician's prescription for a drug for a hospital patient must go to the hospital's pharmacy. This transfer can be done by using an IDoc that is sent from a bedside program to a program in the pharmacy.

Suppose the IDoc has a hierarchy of four levels of segments, as follows.

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. A patient can have more than one second-level segment.

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 can 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. A patient can have more than one medicine ordered on a given visit.

Integrating with SAP

IDoc Types and Segment Definitions

Converting IDoc Hierarchical Data to Flat Records

Because 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:

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 visit, the doctor prescribed naprosin.

The path through the tibia fracture and the prescription for naprosin can be collapsed into a flat record, as follows.

Patient Name	Diagnosis	Visit	Drug
Johnson	tibia fracture	followup	naprosin

The two other complete paths can be collapsed into the following flat records.

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

When BarTender reads IDocs, it collapses data trees into flat records. From these records, you can select the fields that you need in objects on your template.

Master Segment

You will not always need a item to be printed for every possible record that could be produced from the data hierarchy in an IDoc. You can configure BarTender to select only some records at print time, 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 only the records that you need from an IDoc.

The master segment is the segment whose data is the focus of interest for your design needs. BarTender produces one record for every segment in the IDoc that you designate as the master segment.

Example

Consider the data tree that was shown in the introductory example. If the hospital needs a label for every drug that is prescribed, then it sets the master segment at the fourth level. This causes BarTender to produce three records, as follows.

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. In this case, the master segment is set to the third level, and BarTender produces two records, as follows.

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

In the first of these records, BarTender includes the Drug field from the level below the master segment and concatenates all the data from the segments at that lower level.

Because BarTender produces one record for every instance of the master segment, complete the following statement to help you determine what to use as your master segment.

In the typical run of items that are built from this IDoc, I want one item to be printed for every _____________.

In this example, if "visit" completes the statement, then the third level is probably the best choice for the master segment level. If "prescribed drug" completes the statement, then the fourth level is probably the best choice.

About 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