>EDI actually is pretty ugly. <g> Not that it isn't the best way to proceed.. Just that the standard is so darn flexible within each document definition as to almost - not quite - render EDI an untenable 'solution' for < Fortune 1000 companies. You know as well as I do just how expensive EDI solutions have been in the past. Let's start at around US$100,000 per document.
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>Still, for all it's warts - it works.
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>I also do not think XML will replace EDI - only perhaps extend it a bit.

I think EDI was ugly for the people who had to arrive at the specification and detail the transactions. For us that followed, it wasn't that bad ... more a question of insuring that you had the requisite source elements.

It might cost 100K to implement a document, but the savings can be tremendous; the saving in handling a Purchase Order (ie. a document), for example. "Order costs" have always been a major component of Purchasing.

At the same time, the whole B2B model is changing. Major Companies are not "sending" PO's anymore; they are partnering in ways such that the Vendor is now responsible for taking the necessary steps to insure that the Customer's shelves are stocked ... The Customer pays for what they consume.

>www.eccompany.com - now www.adx.com. I helped with some of the core technologies where in 1996 we sent, from a real bank, a real transaction from a real bank account over the Internet into a real bank account at another real bank. We also successfully 'married' EDI & ACH - something I haven't seen many others do.

There you go ... you didn't throw up your hands and say this is too difficult.

>Personally I think something along the lines of Rick Strahl's Web Connection plus (and this is the hard part) a local, desktop ability to 'map' to the local data store is what will eventually extend EDI down to the smaller companies - who really cannot compete on the cost side right now.

This happened in the Oil and Gas Industry; companies didn't implement EDI per se. They adopted a single package that took a relatively simple input stream and did the EDI formatting and transmission for them. It handles all monthly "settlements" (eg. Revenues and Royalties) ... and it's the only way you are allowed to play ... from the biggest to the smallest.

I can easily visualize a COM Server (with properties, collections and methods) to handle the generation/parsing of one or more EDI transactions.