Karen,
I have done a fair amount of work with EDI. Both canned packages and Rbase . EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is a set of (not so standard) standards. There are several electronic documents that are assigned an EDI document number such as: 850 - Purchase order 810 - Invoice 856 - Advance Ship Notice 870 - Order Status 997 - Functional Acknowledgement The concept is that each document is sent via an electronic medium. Most commonly AS1, AS2 or a VAN. ( Basically email or FTP site based communication servers. Although Outlook is not one of them) True EDI would have when one document is sent, a return acknowledgement is the returned by the receiver . This acknowledgment insures that "nothing get lost in translation". A system should have built in for example, that if I send 200 "850 Purchase Order Documents", it would notify me if I did not receive an acknowledgment for any PO. If I did not receive a 997, then the system would send a request to the receiver for one, etc. EDI can become very complex if implemented fully. The files that are sent back and forth are text files that have to be formatted to specifics. Although the specifics are often modified by each company. A lot of testing is required. Contact me off list if you want to discuss more indepth . -Bob Thompson Technology Consultants La Porte , IN 46350 ----- Original Message ----- From: KarenTellef @cs.com To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" < rbase -l@ rbase .com> Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 1:29:45 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central Subject: [RBASE-L] - General EDI question A client just asked me if RBase is "compatible" with sending EDI. I told him I didn't know anything about EDI, but that I have read postings from people who have done this kind of transfer. I'm not sure this client could tell me anything about how EDI works, so can someone tell me what in the heck it means to use EDI, what the general procedure is? Karen
