🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <E5z5C3.JL1@world.std.com>,
Joseph H Allen <jhallen@world.std.com> wrote:
>In article <E5yrEv.4o2@bigbird.telly.org>,
>Evan Leibovitch <evan@bigbird.telly.org> wrote:
>
>>The HL is not the bill of lading itself (that's the ASN). But it is the
>>component that makes the ASN the monster of all retail EDI documents.
>
>How does this work?  Does it give container within container information
>with varying recursion depth?  Sounds like it would map to a transative
>closure problem in relational database theory.

Yes, HL gives container within container info with varying recursion
depth.  However (although I'm getting email to the contrary now), 
as far as I could tell nobody really used it that way except possibly
for the one company that proposed it.  And -nobody- I talked to seemed
to understand what it was really supposed to do.  The only way I could
see to implement something that conformed to the letter of the standard
came out looking not too useful, but I did it that way anyway, since
no other reasonable choice was apparent.  It wasn't so difficult, just
ugly.  But I have the impression (real EDI users correct me if I'm
wrong) that it just isn't important to handle the full generality
in practice.

I continue to believe relational databases aren't a natural way to
represent what goes into EDI documents.