Pete, You nailed it: "EDI is complicated, difficult to implement, time consuming, and expensive. The only thing that it has going for it is that it is 8 times better than the alternative."
But EDI can be simple (if you don't believe me check the success of the book Demystifying EDI), inexpensive (distribute cheap translation engines), and won't consume much time (leverage the cost of mapping by developing generic maps that include the standards in pre-configured Libraries that multiple SMEs can use to convert EDI to/from Text). Best of all. SMEs get electronic Text documents (CSV, or XML if you want) that they can view, understand, print, edit, and import/export to Quickbooks, Excel, or whatever. As to XML, it may someday substitute EDI, if and when it achieves the same level of standarization (maybe CICA ?) but even then documents will be 10 to 20 times larger that EDI equivalents and you'll have to convert them to your own formats. So until that happens why not extend the use of EDI to more SMEs and even households, translate to/from simple Text or XML documents that users can understand. Let them create their own interfaces to import/export the data, or even modify the generic maps to fit your own needs if they want, they're not dumb, they just need a little help... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] . 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/
