The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

When EDI was born, (in the 1970s),  the committee did its best adopt a forward thinking plan and architecture.  But there was really no way for people living before the birth of e-mail to make place for what we use today to do business.  So the early versions of EDI had no place for e-mail addresses, and other things that we use in e-commerce today.

The goal of EDI was to provide a way to support communications between dissimilar computer systems.  EDI was intended as a light weight, reliable means to transmit data. (more…)

EDI is a standard, and having standards in e-commerce or any type of integration, is important in achieving success in your integration efforts.  I found this old video of Bill Gates talking about this very topic, and I decided to share it here. (more…)

What is the GS segment?

The GS segment is the second mandatory enveloping segment.  It shares some properties with the ISA segment.  There is a sender and receiver, version Identifier, time stamp and control number.  But one thing that the GS has that the ISA does not is a Functional Identifier.

That’s right, Functional.  This means that within the GS envelope are only EDI messages or documents that have the same function. (more…)