EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Transport) is an international standard for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

It should be noted that the file format with the name EDI (or EDI X12 as the data format is based on The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 standards) and EDIFACT are two electronic data interchange standards used for exchanging data between computer systems of different organizations They should not, however, be mixed together. EDI is a simple, fixed-length format, while EDIFACT is a more complex, flexible format. EDI is widely used in North America, while EDIFACT is widely used in Europe and Asia and is more adaptable to different regions and industries.

The purpose of EDIFACT is to provide a standardized format for electronic business documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, to facilitate the exchange of data between organizations. This allows businesses to communicate with each other electronically in a common format, making it easier to process and manage data. EDIFACT is widely used in industries such as finance, healthcare, and logistics to facilitate electronic data interchange between trading partners.

The focus of this course is processing EDIFACT messages with Frends. We assume that you are familiar with the basics of EDIFACT messages. If you need to refresh or widen your EDIFACT knowledge, there are plenty of EDIFACT tutorials and guides on the internet, like this tutorial from GXS.

EDIFACT files are just normal files and they could have any extension however the .txt and .edi are the two most common. Usually, EDIFACT messages are transferred between organizations with an SFTP protocol, but other methods such as FTP, web-based file transfer, or even via email can be used. Transportation is not within the scope of this course, as they are covered in other courses.

The next article is an Example of Parsing EDIFACT messages with Frends

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