Less maps required equals less time and money spent.
ECMap Project and Map definition allows you to group related information together. This forms the baseline for sharing information and logic across projects and maps. The design of ECMap is oriented towards minimizing the number of maps created – a map can serve multiple trading partner relationships.
The bottom line is that development costs are reduced and maintenance costs are lowered as well.
Setting up your mapping environment involves:
Setting up a project
To set up a project, you must provide a project name and a directory path for grouping your maps. Optionally, you may also provide a description of the project and the name and telephone number of a contact person. In this tutorial, you name your project Health Insurance and place your mapping information in the project directory c:\hlthmaps.
Select Project on the toolbar or Workspace. The Project window displays.
From the File menu on the Project window, select New. From the New submenu, select Project. The New Project window displays.
Enter Health Insurance in
the Project Name text box.
Project Description is an optional field.
Enter c:\hlthmaps in
the Directory text box. You can also Browse for the directory if
it already exists.
Contact is an optional field.
Phone Number is an optional field.
Select OK to exit from the New Project window and return to the Project - Health Insurance window.
Setting up a map
ECMap makes it easy to ensure that your data is Y2K compliant. You simply define a specific “windowing” year as your “Century Minimum”. All 6-digit dates with years beginning at this year are assumed to be in the current century, while all dates with prior years are assumed to be in the next century. ECMap automatically converts all 6-digit dates to 8-digit dates for you.
If you are using an ODBC database for your log database, you must also set up the DSN (Data Source Name) to connect the database that contains log information to this map.
Optionally, you can also provide a description of the map.
From the File menu on the Project - Health Insurance window, select New. From the New submenu, select Map. The New Map Definition window displays. It has three tabs – Map Properties, Map Directories, and Map DSN. Enter the required information on each tab before you select OK at the bottom of the window.
On the map properties tab
ECMap automatically populates the Map/Project text box with the name of the project – Health Insurance.
In the Map/Map text box, enter BIGMANCO.
From the Map/MapType drop-down list, select ANY2ANY.
In the Options/Century Minimum text box, enter 11.
Options/Description is an optional field.
On the map directories tab, projects and maps can be stored in the directory structure of your choice. This allows for extreme flexibility for both map development and map management in the operations environment.
Select the Map Directories tab to make it active. ECMap automatically populates the text boxes of all the directories, in the format c:\ <project directory path>\<map name>. The directory entries for this example appear as follows:
c:\hlthmaps\BIGMANCO
For this example, you use these default directories. However, ECMap gives you the option to change the default entries, and it makes changing them a very easy process. You can use the Change All button in combination with the Change/Protect buttons to change multiple unprotected directories at once, or you can manually change the directories one at a time. The protection status does not affect manual changes.
To change multiple directories at one time, set the
protection status of each directory you want to change to Change
and set all others to Protect. Select Change All to browse for a
new directory. All the unprotected directories are changed to the
directory you select.
Since you are allowed to browse for unprotected directories only, the Invert button is a handy feature that allows you to temporarily change a protected directory to unprotected, browse for and select a new directory, and then change the status back to protected by selecting the Invert button again.
On the Map DSN tab:
Enter information on the Map DSN tab only if you are using ODBC databases. Since you are not using ODBC databases in this tutorial, do not enter information on this tab.
Select OK to return to the Project Maps window.
Creating an any-to-any map
Assign a name to the map and associate that name with attributes, including a list of directories. You must:
Define the type of map as Any2Any
Specify the transaction as ANY
Specify the Y2K windowing year (Century Minimum)
Specify the directories in which map-related information are stored
Making your new map the current active map
The project map that you just defined is highlighted on the Map – Health Insurance BIGMANCO window. You now make the map “current” by double-clicking on it.
You return to the main ECMap window and the “current” map information displays in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
Each time you start ECMap, it “remembers” the
last map you used and automatically opens it for you.
