Issues in open EDI

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is gaining more and more importance in business and administration, as big savings are in sight. In this report, diverse aspects of autonomy are first identified and analysed. It is made plausible that autonomy is the key issue in the EDI environment. Based on this observation, an examination is made of how the work within EDI environments must be organized and how an EDI systems architecture should look. The focus is on the integration of EDI into business applications and on the Open EDI ideas put forward by the special working group on EDI at ISO, SWG-EDI. It is shown that the globally and locally controlled domains must be separated from each other both conceptually and in reality. The way these separately controlled domains are reconciled is crucial from the autonomy- preservation point of view. A tentative reference architecture, the need for which was identified by the working group, is also suggested. One conclusion below is that there should be two reference models, rather than only one. They are called the Communication Reference Model, and the Systems Reference Architecture. They point out the places where integration could happen and how it should be done. It is further suggested that the future standardization work should include automatic scenario development tools, like a machine-executable scenario language, which would be supported by Open EDI systems.