I'll jump in with a few answers, if Rachel doesn't mind. At 10:59 AM 1/20/2005 +1000, James Hatcher wrote <snipped>:
>- Is is correct that way back UN/EDIFACT was proposed & approved and then >USA developed X12 as our own standard or was it the other way round X12 >came first & EDIFACT followed? TDCC begat X12 begat UN/EDIFACT >- Any idea what happened with the initiative? Did the death of the "merge" >initiative have anything to do the fact that DISA would be out of business >as you noted above or was it more because companies like Sterling are very >strong with X12 mappings and not as competent as the European vendors with >EDIFACT and would have lost some competitive advantage in the US market? >There is also the whole X12 consulting industry which would have to retool >to learn the new merged standard. The bottom line is that the ANSI ASC X12 membership, when several sunset dates came up for retiring new X12 syntax development, always voted to keep it alive. The biggest factors seemed to be that the health insurance industry had just started putting substantial resources into developing X12 syntax messages and didn't want to change course in midstream to UN/EDIFACT. In addition, other industries, such as rail, saw little need to coordinate with the rest of the world and wanted to keep using X12. Still others felt the cost didn't justify the benefits. I doubt if any of the reasons you cite played a significant role. Mike --------------------------------------------------------------- Michael C. Rawlins, Rawlins EC Consulting www.rawlinsecconsulting.com Using XML with Legacy Business Applications (Addison-Wesley, 2003) www.awprofessional.com/titles/0321154940 . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
