ANSI X12

ANSI (American National Standards Institute) X12 is the most commonly used EDI standard within North America. Document specifications range from the standard POs (850) and Invoices (810) to documents such as Product Activities (867) and Business Credit Reports (155). The commission overlooking the ANSI X12 standards has laid out a set of guidelines used by companies to create there documents. However the guidelines are so encompassing, that it is very rare to have two trading partners that send the same exact documents. This has given rise to a translation software industry; offering both software that sits out the users site and is managed by the user as well as outsourcing the entire EDI process to a third party. Within every X12 document, you will find envelope information in the ISA, GS, SE, IEA lines. These lines are used to identify the 'To' and 'From' as well as other controls used for checking the integrity of the data sent.

EDIFACT

UN/EDIFACT (United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport) is the only international standard used for EDI. Much like X12, data is controlled by segment terminators, element seperators, sub-element seperators (much more common with EDIFACT) and an envelope encompassing all the data. The best way to describe the difference between X12 and EDIFACT is the difference between meters and feet - the information is the same, just in a different format.

XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general standard used for sending data between two parties. It has been utilized by EDI Professionals due to it's ability to send more human readable documents. The major pros of using XML is it's ease of implementation with other companies (assuming the trading partner has an IT person who has worked with the documents before) as there are no implementation guides necessary. XML also eliminates the traditional EDI translators that can be very price; replacing instead with XML parsers that can be found for free on the web, or by writing a program using tools associated with almost all major coding languages. The major cons of XML are the file sizes can be huge and therefor a transmission other then the VAN will need to be used, as well as many companies using a legacy EDI systems will not support XML document exchange.