Patrice,
This question is raised periodically on this list. You may find other
discussions in the archives. People who are new to the X12 standard find
it difficult to understand why they can get W3C "standards", UN/EDIFACT,
and so many others from the web, but can't get X12.
In regard to your immediate questions, you *do* have full access to the
X12 standard publications, but yes, for a price. You seem to confuse
public (which implies use) with free, but from your comments it is
obvious that your complaint is that the standards are not publicly
posted on the Internet where anyone can download them without paying a fee.
The short answer is that while the actual standards development in ASC
X12 is done by volunteers supported by member organizations, an
infrastructure (meaning staff and facilities) is also required. That
infrastructure must be funded. When X12 was started over 25 years ago a
common model for funding that infrastructure was to charge for the
published standard, in addition to charging dues to member companies. It
made sense. How else were you going to read the standard, other than
from a book? And, people are quite accustomed to paying money for books,
and big money for specialized reference books.
From a member company perspective it was (and still is) kind of counter
intuitive - you take employees away from their regular work to develop
standards, pay money to send them places, pay membership dues, then buy
the published standard. All of this while anyone can use the standard
without paying any licensing fees (some rare exceptions exist). Odd as
it may seem, this model worked very well for many ANSI, ISO, and other
groups for many years, at least until the web came along.
In recent years other standards development organizations have developed
different funding models that don't rely as much, or at all, on
publications revenue. ASC X12 and DISA have not, but not for a lack of
trying. I've been involved in several discussions in the X12 Steering
Committee on this topic and share some of your frustration. Fully
answering any questions about why X12 hasn't moved on is a discussion
better left for the bar than this list, as I'm sure Mr. Anderson will
attest.
X12 is by no means the only organization that has not adopted a
different funding model. For example, try finding the list of SCAC
codes used in transportation. You will also find that there are still
several ISO standards that are only available for a fee. There was a
big flap a few years ago about an ISO proposal to charge fees for even
using the standard country codes or some such nonsense. They backed off.
This probably doesn't ease your frustration, but I hope it helps answer
your questions.
Mike
BTW - The only X12 standards you really need for your parser are X12.5
and X12.6. I don't know if they are still available as single
publications, but it's worth checking into. Industry and company
implementation guides for individual transaction sets should be
sufficient for the rest of what you're trying to do.
--
-----------------------------------------
Michael C. Rawlins, Senior Software Engineer, Inovis (a GXS Company)
Sent from personal account
On 10/12/2010 3:58 PM, Patrice wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> Just wanted to share my frustration... I am working on my X12 parser and I am
> wondering why I do not have FULL access to the X12 standard specifications :-(
>
> It's not publicly available :-( Even worse you have to pay, and it's
> EXPENSIVE :-(
>
> I am trying to find my way through publicly available implementation
> guidelines given partial information :-(
>
> WHY is not (1) PUBLIC and (2) FREE as EDIFACT? That's a pity!
>
> /Patrice
> "EDI is not complex, and therefore should not be expensive."
>
>
>
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