4 ms·

This reminds me of one of the things we work with in our company, Amadeus EDIFACTs. I want to buy the person who initially wrote the parsing for it at our workp

This reminds me of one of the things we work with in our company, Amadeus EDIFACTs. I want to buy the person who initially wrote the parsing for it at our workplace a beer. Example snippet, with fake data (AIR-BLK791;7A;;232;0750058720;1A1216900;007501\r\nAMD 0750068617;1/1; \r\nGW759208;1A1216900\r\nNXC1A 4O0ORDT030;0751;XYZC7213P;67502886;XYZC7213P;67502886;XYZC7213P;67502886;XYZC7213P;67502886;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;TA 4O0ORDT\r\nA-LACSA;LR 1330\r\nB-TTP/INV/T3/RT\r\nC-7906/ 1833SEGS-1173LGSU-B-9--\r\nD-127531;121751;121751\r\nG-X ;;XYZXYZ;\r\nH-001;002OYYZ; ... continued)

Systemic33 13y ago
What part of that is the fake data, and what part is the code?
- truebosko 13y ago
  What I pasted is mock data of what would normally come from Amadeus, there is none of our code in that. We parse it with Python
  - Systemic33 13y ago
    Oh now i get it. Looks a lot like .csv with semicolon.
berkut 13y ago
Sigh.... I'd forgotten about this (used to do this in a previous job) Parsing airline flight bookings straight from raw sockets was not fun. Thing is, it does the job, and if you watch users requesting and making bookings with the system (or other similar travel service bookings using things like VT320 terminals), I'd bet a web interface couldn't actually be faster. But only if you know how to use it. Rather ironically, about 4 years ago, they added a "web service" to this which just wrapped the console output directly in a single set of XML tags - I kid you not - no attempt to nicely separate atoms into separate tags.
- nikatwork 13y ago
  Someone needs to invent a word for the job of gluing together horrific data formats and/or scrubbing that data with regex and trying to semantically parse it. Anyone who hasn't had this job during their programming career is very lucky. "Poogrokking"?
  - jloughry 13y ago
    The Oxford English Dictionary needs to know about this word.
MichaelSalib 13y ago
EDIFACT is a standard for tree-based message exchange used in the airline industry; think of it as a third-rate XML designed in the 80s. Airlines are very picky about using EDIFACT to specify the syntax of messages but usually don't bother to explain the semantics, which is why airline messaging is an n^2 problem. Every airline has custom code for exchanging messages with each of their partner airlines, even though in theory they're all using a well defined messaging standard.
- icebraining 13y ago
  The Brazilian bank industry uses it for processing automated payments and receipts, but thankfully the formats are fairly standard across banks. Writing a parser and generator wasn't particularly hard, after finding enough documentation online.

Systemic33 13y ago

What part of that is the fake data, and what part is the code?

truebosko 13y ago
What I pasted is mock data of what would normally come from Amadeus, there is none of our code in that. We parse it with Python
- Systemic33 13y ago
  Oh now i get it. Looks a lot like .csv with semicolon.

berkut 13y ago

Sigh.... I'd forgotten about this (used to do this in a previous job) Parsing airline flight bookings straight from raw sockets was not fun. Thing is, it does the job, and if you watch users requesting and making bookings with the system (or other similar travel service bookings using things like VT320 terminals), I'd bet a web interface couldn't actually be faster. But only if you know how to use it. Rather ironically, about 4 years ago, they added a "web service" to this which just wrapped the console output directly in a single set of XML tags - I kid you not - no attempt to nicely separate atoms into separate tags.

nikatwork 13y ago
Someone needs to invent a word for the job of gluing together horrific data formats and/or scrubbing that data with regex and trying to semantically parse it. Anyone who hasn't had this job during their programming career is very lucky. "Poogrokking"?
- jloughry 13y ago
  The Oxford English Dictionary needs to know about this word.

MichaelSalib 13y ago

EDIFACT is a standard for tree-based message exchange used in the airline industry; think of it as a third-rate XML designed in the 80s. Airlines are very picky about using EDIFACT to specify the syntax of messages but usually don't bother to explain the semantics, which is why airline messaging is an n^2 problem. Every airline has custom code for exchanging messages with each of their partner airlines, even though in theory they're all using a well defined messaging standard.

icebraining 13y ago
The Brazilian bank industry uses it for processing automated payments and receipts, but thankfully the formats are fairly standard across banks. Writing a parser and generator wasn't particularly hard, after finding enough documentation online.