UN/EDIFACT Communication standard.

UN/EDIFACT Communication standard.

[Marin David Condic]

I sort of stumbled on this communication standard called EDIFACT and I'm
wondering if anybody has any experience with it?

http://www.unece.org/trade/untdid/welcom1.htm

My curiosity is along these lines: 1) Is this standard in some way in
wide usage or are there more widely accepted standards? 2) Has anybody
implemented record types, packages or other subsystems that provide any
level of reusable implementation of this standard (or parts of it)? 3)
The on-line document is - to say the least - confusing. Is there any
sort of simplified, distilled, "EDIFACT For Dummies" document that might
do something like show a simple record layout? (After glancing at some
of the message definitions, I couldn't seem to get to the point where
someone was saying something like "A date field will occupy 8 bytes -
four bytes for year, two bytes for month, two bytes for day...." The
info may be in there somewhere, but I got tired of digging.)

MDC
-- 
Marin David Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
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Re: UN/EDIFACT Communication standard.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Marin David Condic (condicma@bogon.pwfl.com) wrote:

: I sort of stumbled on this communication standard called EDIFACT and I'm
: wondering if anybody has any experience with it?

Yes, although its popularity has gone down, it is still used heavily 
in logistical and supply-chain applications.

: My curiosity is along these lines: 1) Is this standard in some way in
: wide usage or are there more widely accepted standards? 

Well, at least over here it's is more or less _the_ standard.

: 2) Has anybody
: implemented record types, packages or other subsystems that provide any
: level of reusable implementation of this standard (or parts of it)? 

Yes, but this is of course propriety software.

: 3) The on-line document is - to say the least - confusing. Is there any
: sort of simplified, distilled, "EDIFACT For Dummies" document that might
: do something like show a simple record layout? (After glancing at some
: of the message definitions, I couldn't seem to get to the point where
: someone was saying something like "A date field will occupy 8 bytes -
: four bytes for year, two bytes for month, two bytes for day...." The
: info may be in there somewhere, but I got tired of digging.)

Hmmm, I think we used several documents (this is about 5 years ago), but
none that are in the public domain.

regards,
Jerry.

--
-- Jerry van Dijk | Leiden, Holland
-- Team Ada       | jdijk@acm.org
-- see http://stad.dsl.nl/~jvandyk