EDI Standards

Question

Hi All,
  Generally EDI has two standards EDIFACT and ANSI X12. what are the main differences between them and I need More details about them. So any one provide the study materials for both of the standards. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

<b>Relationship between X12 and EDIFACT</b>
The current requirement for business to operate in an international marketplace has resulted in efforts to merge the X12 standard with the EDIFACT standard. As the book and serials industry, particularly publishers of scientific and technical materials, do business internationally, they are active in the initiative to develop international EDI standards. While the formats supported by these standards are similar in structure, there are significant differences that will need to be resolved.
As the ANSI X12 standards were already in use when work began to develop the EDIFACT standards, the format and structure of X12 messages were a useful model. As a result, X12 and EDIFACT messages share common structural characteristics:
character-based encoding, with multiple levels of support for various encoding standards, e.g. telex, 7-bit ASCII
tagged and delimited data structures
a global set of data segments and a segment directory to define them.
a global set of data elements and a data element directory to define them.
a message of a predefined type consisting of a specific sequence of segments.
implicit identification of data elements in a segment by location.
an "interchange" consisting of either "functional groups" each of which contains one or more messages or one or more messages by themselves.
However, given that the existing European standards (UN/TDI) were also considered when developing the EDIFACT formats and structures, there are some differences between the two standards (Woods, 1989):
EDIFACT uses composite data elements
looping and nesting procedures are different
6 data elements types are defined in ANSI X12 while only three are defined in EDIFACT
there is no provision in EDIFACT for optional fields
EDIFACT allows for two levels of syntax.
The differences between the two standards are considered to be minor by the X12/North American EDIFACT secretariat. There is very little difference between the two syntaxes in the overall design of the transaction set/message. There are however some differences in the way segments and data elements are structured so that a message developed using X12 syntax cannot be deciphered by a system based on the EDIFACT syntax. Work is currently underway to align the two syntaxes so that software using the UN/EDIFACT formats will also be able to communicate with X12 based systems (Malhotra, 1991). Another solution is to develop a common data dictionary that could be used by software developers and system integrators (Olson, 1992). This approach would result in EDI software that supports both the EDIFACT and X12 data formats.
http://www.ifla.org/VI/5/reports/rep4/42.htm#chap2.4
http://www.ifla.org/VI/5/reports/rep4/rep4.htm