Long Live EDI!

摘要

Around the time that the group that approves such things signed off on XML 1.0 in February of 1998, the trade press began to write the obituary for electronic data interchange (EDI), which it predicted would soon fade into extinction along with the value-added networks (VANs) that profited from it. Cost was the primary factor. The critics attacked EDI's transaction-based telecommunications charges, special software, licensing costs, annual upgrade charges and, most expensive of all, the technical wherewithal required to keep the data flowing. How could such a business model survive in a world of cost-free data transfer over the Internet, a world where extensible markup language (XML) promised to relieve companies from the "burdensome complexity and rigidity" of EDI protocol? The answer: It works. The corollary: Nothing's free. When it comes to information technology, it's rare to hear reports of 20 or even 25 years of experience. But that's how it is with EDI. Historically, EDI users have been large enterprises and their immediate suppliers, businesses with high volumes and the most to gain from eliminating paper and automating business transactions.