American National Standards Institute (ANSI) - The principal standards coordination body in the United States. ANSI is a member of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Business Application - A computer-based system that processes business information in support of a specific business function such as purchasing, accounting, or logistics management, etc. Business application data is produced by such applications and transmitted to a translation program for conversion into an EDI format, and vice versa.
Data Element - This is the smallest, meaningful piece of information in a business transaction. A data element may condense lengthy descriptive information into a short code. Equivalent to a data field in a paper document; a series of data elements is used to build a data segment. A data element dictionary defines the data element and, where appropriate, the code is part of the ASC X12 or UN/EDIFACT standards.
Data Element Dictionary - The publication that lists all of the data elements used within EDI standards.
Electronic Commerce (EC) - The paperless exchange of business information (goods and services) or ideas using EDI, Electronic Mail (E-Mail), electronic bulletin boards, Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), facsimile, video conference, and other similar technologies.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) - The computer-to-computer exchange of business transaction information in a public standard format.
Implementation Convention - A subset of the X12 standard that represents the common practices and/or interpretations of the use of X12 standards. Conventions define how trading partners will use the standards to accommodate their mutual needs. An implementation convention should exist for each EDI transaction set that is to be used. Implementation conventions deal with transaction sets at the data element level. For the Government, or any industry sector, implementation conventions (for doing EDI within that industry) can be highly detailed subsets of the implementation guidelines (for doing EDI within that industry).
Implementation Guideline - The guideline contains instructions on the use of EDI. It provides additional information to assist in conducting EDI. The guideline is intended to provide assistance, which should not be the sole source of information.
IP - Internet Protocol
Mapping - The process of manually mapping data elements from User Defined File (UDF) formats to and from corresponding standard EDI transaction sets.
ORDERS Message - Specifies details for goods or services ordered using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) between trading partners involved in administration, commerce, and transport under conditions agreed upon between the seller and the buyer.
TCP - Transmission Control Protocol.
Trading Partner (External) - A non-federal Government entity with whom the Federal Government exchanges business transactions.
Trading Partner (Internal) - A Federal Government entity who exchanges business transactions with another Federal Government entity.
Trading Partners - Entities who exchange business transactions.
Transaction - All of the business information contained in a transaction set.
Transaction Set - A semantically meaningful unit of transaction information exchanged between EDI trading partners. It can be thought of as the electronic counterpart of a paper document that represents a transaction, (e.g., an invoice, a bill of lading, or a medical insurance statement).
Translation - A utility that uses the results of the mapping process to automatically convert the data in User Defined File (UDF) formats to and from corresponding standard EDI transaction sets.
Value Added Network (VAN) - Generally, commercial entities that transmit, receive, and store EDI transactions on behalf of their customers. VANs may also provide additional services known as Value Added Services. VANS are also known as third party networks.
Value Added Service (VAS) - A Value Added Service (VAS) may be a separate commercial organization (also known as an EDI service bureau) that provides EDI-related services, or a VAN that provides extra fee-based services beyond standard VAN services to its customers. Such services may range from translation to "EDI-to-FAX" services to complete EDI-integrated business systems.
XLink - An XML application that expands the way hyperlinks can be used. XLink makes it possible to target a specific section of a document, and adds other options to make linking easier.
