
1 • XML & Related Technologies
1.3 ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE (EDI)
1.3.1 Understanding EDI
When businesses sell or buy, they need to exchange a variety of documents, such as purchase orders, sales
orders, letters of credit, etc. Each company has its own formats for these documents. The format specifies how
various items such as product code, description, quantity, rate, amounts, discounts, etc., will look like, and
what their sizes are. Interestingly, when company A sends a Purchase Order (PO) to company B, company B
creates a Sales Order (SO) from it. Because the format of B’s SO differs from that of the PO of A, not only
in terms of product ...