Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork handles electronic data in virtually any standard or format. However the format of your data affects which services Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork can provide to you. This section explains issues related to the format of your data.

Non-EDI data includes the following:

• Fixed-length flat files
• Variable-length flat files (such as .csv files)
• XML files
• Binary files (such as .pdf files)

Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork performs two types of non-EDI processing:

• Content-based routing

  The non-EDI data is processed just like EDI data. These files contain information like the sender ID receiver ID and document type in defined locations. Any service that Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork performs on EDI data can be performed for content-based non-EDI data. The exception to this is binary data.

• Context-based routing

  The non-EDI data either does not contain sender/receiver IDs and document types or includes that information but not in defined locations. This data cannot be processed the same way as EDI data and is simply routed from sender to receiver without any additional processing.

Services such as Document Tracking and reports are available for both content- and context-based routing but with different levels of detail.