Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations such as documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system electronically. The transmission is done from one business organization to another similar organization without human intervention. EDI can be used to describe the technology by which business documents (such as orders, invoices, shipping contracts, etc) are transmitted electronically. Under this concept, a file is copied to a diskette and loaded into another computer or transmitted over Internet or Intranet. A more precise definition implies direct computer-to-computer communication of business transactions in a standard format where each computer understands the meaning of each field without human assistance. EDI began in the early 1970s when the transportation industry (i.e. ocean, trucking and rail) formed the Transportation Data Coordinating Committee (TDCC). The TDCC is a non-profit organization in Washington DC and organizes data standards, formats codes, and protocols for the transportation of business documents. The first TDCC standard, composed of 45 transaction sets, was published in 1975. ASC X12 was introduced in 1979 and had the standards on those developed by the TDCC. Computer technology was not very developed that time and the majority of computers were mainframe computers running proprietary operating systems. There were numerous modem standards and most protocols for transmitting files were supplier specific. Even sending tapes was not easily accomplished because some used the 8 bit character encoding (EBCDIC system) to store alphanumeric data and some used ASCII. The basic reasons for the introduction of EDI include low cost, reduction in paper dependency, improved customer service, reduction in mistakes and improved competitiveness. Since the emergence of the Internet, EDI has received a great deal of research attention,
Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations such as documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system electronically. The transmission is done from one business organization to another similar organization without human intervention. EDI can be used to describe the technology by which business documents (such as orders, invoices, shipping contracts, etc) are transmitted electronically. Under this concept, a file is copied to a diskette and loaded into another computer or transmitted over Internet or Intranet. A more precise definition implies direct computer-to-computer communication of business transactions in a standard format where each computer understands the meaning of each field without human assistance. EDI began in the early 1970s when the transportation industry (i.e. ocean, trucking and rail) formed the Transportation Data Coordinating Committee (TDCC). The TDCC is a non-profit organization in Washington DC and organizes data standards, formats codes, and protocols for the transportation of business documents. The first TDCC standard, composed of 45 transaction sets, was published in 1975. ASC X12 was introduced in 1979 and had the standards on those developed by the TDCC. Computer technology was not very developed that time and the majority of computers were mainframe computers running proprietary operating systems. There were numerous modem standards and most protocols for transmitting files were supplier specific. Even sending tapes was not easily accomplished because some used the 8 bit character encoding (EBCDIC system) to store alphanumeric data and some used ASCII. The basic reasons for the introduction of EDI include low cost, reduction in paper dependency, improved customer service, reduction in mistakes and improved competitiveness. Since the emergence of the Internet, EDI has received a great deal of research attention,