Control Number in EDI Document Protocol

Control Numbers are included in all header and trailer segments as an additional means of tracking and confirming EDI transmissions. Control numbers issued in the header segments must match control numbers assigned in the trailer segments. An ISA control number must match the IEA control number, the GS control number must match the GE control number, and the ST control number must match the SE control number in each EDI transmission, or there could possibly be errors. Control numbers can be assigned in the following two ways.

Control Number along with the sender ID provides a unique identifier to identify incoming EDI data from a sender. Following are various control numbers,

Interchange Control Number : Originated by the sender and is typically a sequence number. This together with the sender ID uniquely identifies the Interchange.
Functional Group Control Number :This Uniquely identifies Group.
Transaction Set Control Number : This Uniqely Identifies Transaction Set.

Control Numbers are predominantly used for correlation at various stages; it may be correlation in the back end application or correlation in the B2B application.

Control Number Generated by Back end Application

This is the most likely case as back end application uses the Interchange, Group and Transaction Set Control Number for correlation at various levels and also for correlating the control/Aperack and business messages.

E.g. To correlate 850 EDI message with 997 and 855.


Control Number Generated by B2B

B2B Generates the control number only in case the Back end application send the EDI message with the Keyword #controlNumber for e.g.

#ControlNumber#

Oracle AS B2B fills in the unique number for Interchange and Transaction set Control Number and uses it for correlating the incoming Control messages.

This is not a preferred approach, as most of the correlation has to happen in the back end application.