EDI through a distributed information systems approach

The model of electronic commerce envisions the ability to send large quantities of business transactions electronically to a large number of sometimes anonymous parties. The EDI standards ANSI X12 and EDIFACT provide a framework for formatting a given EDI message, called an EDI transaction. Although the EDI paradigm provides an obvious improvement over the paper world, it suffers from several problems, a major one being lack of flexibility. Introducing a new EDI transaction or making a simple change to an existing transaction is complex, tedious and time-consuming, as it has to be first approved by the ANSI ASC X12 committee and requires updating of the EDI translation software. In this paper, we propose a simple and straightforward approach, based on distributed database concepts, that can eliminate the tedious process of standardization. EDI messages are exchanged through database transactions via a database-to-database communication rather than application-to-application. The most significant outcome of this approach is that EDI is transformed from an electronic analog of a business process in the paper world to a process supporting electronic commerce