There are currently two widely accepted Electronic Commerce (EC)/Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards used in the global marketplace: American National Standards Institute (ANSI) X12 for use within the U.S., and United Nations (UN) rules for Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport (EDIFACT) for international trade. Within the U.S., both industry and Government are expressing interest in accelerating migration to or alignment with the UN/EDIFACT standards (for international electronic data interchange) for business functions such as purchase orders, etc. In fact, the U.S. Government has committed to an eventual migration to the UN/EDIFACT standard. This has resulted in a need for harmonization between these overlapping electronic data interchange standards. However, because of fundamental differences between the data interchange format and the disparity of business functionality between the two standards, achieving compatibility between them presents a complex and challenging task. Numerous methodologies have been introduced and are in development to solve the standard harmonization problems such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) EDI, Object-Oriented (OO)-EDI, and Open-EDI. However, none of these methodologies will be developed and implemented successfully unless the objects captured within the various business processes are semantically understood by all parties. Implementing either the Basic Semantic Repository (BSR) or the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) methodologies within the XML EDI or OO-EDI approach may help solve the problems in capturing syntax and semantics.
This report serves as a quick repository analysis, mainly between the BSR and the UDEF concepts with strong emphasis on XML/EDI. The purpose is not to promote one concept over the other, but rather to reference the available information and identify advantages and disadvantages of each. The information obtained during research for this report will be used on all EDIFACT Central tasks including transportation, testing, and Defense Fuels.
