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EDI Standards

The basic concept of EDI is that companies agree to a standardised format of EDI messages which are then unambiguously exchanged using a reliable, connection-oriented computer network delivery service.
 
There have been two proposed EDI standards:
 
ANSI X.12
developed in the US and widely adopted, although not an international standard. Will eventually (supposedly) be replaced by:
EDIFACT
(EDI For Administration, Commerce and Transport), originally developed by the U.N. (?) and submitted to ISO for ratification as an international (and hence Australian) standard.

 
In EDI, an interchange is made up of one or more messages (or possibly functional groups containing messages of the same type), which in turn are composed of segments built up from one or more single or composite data elements.
 


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