🚀 go-pugleaf

Joseph H Allen <jhallen@world.std.com> wrote:
> An EDI "standard" should then meet these goals:

>  - EDI data should be directly human readable.  The small company could
>    learn how the data is to be formatted just be looking at an example.  A
>    human should be able to process the data (perhaps the small company only
>    receives a few purchase orders- this goal is always a good idea anyway,
>    you still want to be able to conduct business if your machine is down).
EDI is now simple and easily readable, so long as you
 have an EDI transfer, and a description of all the
 fields.

>  - It should be possible to compose an EDI message either by hand or with
>    the absolute minimum in required software.
Too many typo's if composed by hand, just use software
 that can translate the data (which should have gone
 through checks to make sure the data is OK as you were
 entering it into your system, posibly by drop-down
 lists, etc.), into EDI data (which can do more checks
 to make sure the data is OK, thus reducing typo's to a
 minimum).  And it doesn't need that much software, it
 just needs a program to translate your data in your
 database to an EDI format, and e-mail it.

>  - Any standards should be freely copyable.  The big company should be able
>    to just send the small company a copy of the standard (akin to sending it
>    a form).
1. Aren't they?
2. They do!  I haven't yet dealt with a company that
 said we must switch to EDI, without also giving me a
 form telling me what they want (even huge corporate
 businesses "mob bosses", have enough of a brain to
 know that humans in general can't read each others'
 minds).

>  - It should be trivial for the trading partners to make changes to the
>    standards.
Then what good are *STANDARDS* !

>  - EDI data should also of course be machine readable so that the goal of
>    automated processing can be met.  The standard itself should also
>     be machine
>    readable.
Well, duh.  It is.

> An EDI standard should probably look like a form:
I still don't like your format, I'm fine with the current
 EDI format.

> >If you don't mind my asking, why are you interested in EDI if you
> >haven't been using it?  I'm not trying to give you a hard time;
> >I'm just wondering.

> I consult for a company which needs to become EDI capable (and I'm the one
> who has to do it).  This effort is result of: Discovering that all books an
> EDI are crap of the form "you must reengineer your business to conform to
> the new EDI paradigm...".  Discovering that "translator software" costs
> $4000.  Discovering that to get a copy of x12 costs $3000.  Discovering that
> the software is just not going to integrate well with the accouning system
> (unless we upgrade it: $10,000 - $20,000 plus everyone has to learn
> something new).
Hmm, I just started a few months ago (not very experienced),
 and have so far been succesfull.  I have no books on EDI
 standards, but it's simple enough, and the businesses I'm
 doing EDI with, have all given me a list of everything they
 need, making it easy for me to understand what it is that
 they want, and making them happy.  I don't know about cost
 of translators, but if that's your concern, it should be
 simple enough to write your own.  I've written EDI->English
 translators for our customer service department, and it
 would be trivial to write an our_table->EDI translator (I
 have allready had to hack a few things into this translator
 for instance, it will allow '*'s to go into the EDI order,
 and I had to hack in tr '*' '!', to fix this problem).

BTW -- My EDI->English is written in awk (soon to be C when
      I get some free time).

> Of course they're still going to do it (they want the big customer).
Well, of course.

l8r, Me.
-- 
Sometimes,
 you're better off dead.
There's a gun in your hand,
 it's pointing at your head.

  -- Pet Shop Boys (West End Girls)