Why standards exist
Without a shared standard, every pair of trading partners would have to invent their own document format. With a standard, a supplier can plug a new retailer into the same translator they already use for fifty others.
ANSI X12 — the North American standard
Maintained by the Accredited Standards Committee X12 in the United States. The format uses three-digit transaction set IDs (850 for a Purchase Order, 810 for an Invoice, 856 for an Advance Ship Notice). Segments are separated by a tilde, elements by an asterisk, components by a colon — but those delimiters are configurable in the ISA envelope.
UN/EDIFACT — the global standard
United Nations / Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport. Dominant outside North America. Uses memorable message names (ORDERS, INVOIC, DESADV) and a different delimiter scheme — + between elements, : between components, ' at the end of a segment, all of which can be overridden via the UNA service segment.
TRADACOMS — the UK retail standard
Older standard primarily used in UK retail since the 1980s. Documents include ORDHDR (order header) and INVFIL (invoice file). Many UK retailers have migrated to EDIFACT, but TRADACOMS is still encountered in legacy partner integrations.
Side-by-side
| Standard | Region | Example Documents | Segment terminator |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANSI X12 | North America | 850, 810, 856, 855, 997 | ~ (configurable) |
| UN/EDIFACT | Global / EU | ORDERS, INVOIC, DESADV, ORDRSP | ' (configurable) |
| TRADACOMS | United Kingdom | ORDHDR, INVFIL, ACKHDR | ' |
How EDIFlux handles all three
EDIFlux parses any of the three standards into a single normalized JSON shape, so your downstream systems never need to know which standard was used by which partner.