X12 tester and Xlate – non standard separators

Cloverleaf(R) 5.6 on AIX.

This has stumped me and before I spend a lot of time on it I thought maybe someone else has experienced this.

I have an X12 message with non standard separators (the COMPONENT separator in particular).

The X12 tester will not display the components properly. Since the test message is in a file, there is no metadata associated with the file. There does not appear to be any method to add the SEPCHARS field to the metadata for the X12 tester.

Moreover, I need to Xlate that message into another format. I have a proc which I invoke within the Xlate to set the SEPCHARS field in the metadata and that works fine when creating a X12 message (the proper separators are used).

However, one cannot affect the metadata of the inbound message in an Xlate. Since the X12 configurator does not allow the specification of the envelope (from which the SEPCHARS metadata field is populated) it appears the X12 tester and the Xlate tester cannot be used successfully with messages that do not have standard X12 separators.

This looks like in order to test the Xlates (whcih can be very complicated in structure) one will not be able to rely on the testing tools but rather have to actually run through the engine.

If the above is true, development time will be severly impacted.

Can anyone tell me if my above observations are correct or if they are not, guide me to a resolution?