EDI traditionally has been used by large organizations that can afford to spend huge amount of money on converters as well as maintaining private point-to-point networks for security and reliability reasons. This was an unthinkable proposition for the small and medium sized enterprises. The advent of Internet has brightened the possibility of doing online transactions by these small and medium enterprises, but with the compromise on security. Ensuring the flow of EDI data transfer over the Internet in a secure manner is the objective of EDIINT. By implementing
EDIINT solution helps to level the playing field for SMEs by providing a solution that allows these companies to do business with larger organizations and, at the same time, enjoy the cost savings, speed and other benefits of e-Commerce.
EDI over the Internet (EDIINT) is a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that is chartered with creating specifications for transporting EDI or XML documents over the Internet in a secure (digitally signed and encrypted), highly reliable manner.
EDIINT “EDI over the Internet” offers the opportunity for large, medium and small enterprises to connect and exchange business documents over a secure public network and significantly reduce communication costs.
The following are some of the benefits
Secure: Addresses the issues of privacy, integrity, authentication and non-repudiation for B2B e-commerce over the open Internet.
Increased Reliability due to the usage of secure protocols, guaranteed delivery, and encryption decryption techniques
Low-cost as compared to the VAN based transactions
Highly accessible as connectivity to Internet is no more a luxury
Supports high bandwidth communications
Technically mature as the specifications are being continually refined based on the feedback from industry usage
Applicability Statement 1 (AS1) and Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) are the current specifications developed by EDIINT for transporting data between organizations via the Internet.
AS1 is an EDIINT draft standard defining how applications can securely transport EDI and XML over the Internet using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) (RFC 2821). AS1 provides S/MIME encryption and security over SMTP. S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) secures data with authentication, message integrity, non-repudiation of origin, and privacy features and is the standard means of transporting virtually all Internet email. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the protocol used by most email systems for sending email messages between servers.
AS2 is an EDI INT draft standard defining how applications can securely transport EDI and XML over the Internet using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) (RFC 2616).
AS2 is an adjustment of AS1, providing S/MIME over HTTP or HTTP/S, instead of SMTP, as the transport protocol. HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and its secure form, HTTP/S define how messages are formatted and transmitted and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands.
Because AS1 uses SMTP it provides asynchronous, “store and forward” data transport, whereas AS2 makes use of HTTP to allow for synchronous, “real time” transmission of data with immediate message delivery notices.
Secure electronic transmission of data, especially over the Internet, allows organizations to conduct business much more quickly than with paper. For example, turn-around times of business transactions are decreased when conducted electronically. With AS1, data is transferred swiftly via email. With AS2, data is transferred even faster, almost instantaneously, because it uses direct HTTP transfers. Also, organizations benefit by greatly reducing the cost associated with traditional, Value-added Network (VAN) EDI. The AS1/AS2 specifications use the Internet to exchange data and, therefore, eliminate expensive VAN transaction fees.
In addition, because AS1 and AS2 are the recognized standards for data transport, organizations benefit by greatly reducing the time and cost associated with business data exchange. Using the recognized AS1/AS2 standards provides interoperability between data transmissions; ensuring organizations can read each other’s data.
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