>Does anyone know what EDI is? It's for reporting or something.
>
>Please explain, Thanks
>
>Jim

Jim,

To add to what Mark has already said, the ANSI Standards Committee came out with Ansi Standard X12 which is the "official" standard that covers Electronic Data Interchange. If you need to exchange data between systemes where the data are not aligned then you will need some form of EDI in order to get the data from one system to another.

Here's a quick example: Suppose System A stores the Customer Number as an Integer (I know we discourage this but it happens) and the Customer Number in System B is stored as a Character data type. In order to exchange data you need to convert it.

Another issue is data mapping. That is, mapping one data field to another and back.

Almost all large companies (K-Mart, GM, US Government, WalMart, etc) implement the Ansi X12 standard but the standard is so flexible that essentially the standard is almost non-existant. IOW, they each implement the standard their own way. That creates the need for data mapping, which creates the need for intermediate companies that perform this task. Since EDI started life in the 1960's most all current commercially available solutions are mainframe-based and typically more expensive. Usual costs are "per item" and can run around one dollar or so. (I've not kept up on this so I may be wildly off here but I don't think so.)

The big issue is this: When you send a Purchase Order you need to do three things:

1) Know what part of your PO is the header, line item(s) and the footer.
2) Convert that data into a (semi)universal standard to your recipient.
3) Reconstruct correctly every time the original data to import automatically into your computer correctly.

That's called "data mapping". When you think about it it can get exceedingly complex to implement.

Imagine all the possible variations on how data are stored in one system and the need to be able to

There are HUGE companies that provide this service. GEIS (General Electric Information Services), Premenos, Harbinger and so forth. I helped a startup create a PC-based solution at www.eccompany.com and notwithstanding some really disgusting internal political garbage I still think they have the best of all solutions. They not only did EDI but ACH as well and for around US$1,000.00 per installation whereas the "typical" EDI solution back in 1996 was around US$100,000.00!

ANyway, that's a quick look. I'm off to lunch and if you have any other questions please feel free to ask.

Best,

DD