Electronic Commerce : The End of the Beginning 13

XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, has become the standard for defining data interchange formats in Internet applications. Therefore, it is currently one of the most popular topics in the area of Electronic Commerce. The XML-hype also enters the field of electronic data interchange (EDI). In the past decades EDI standards, like UN/EDIFACT or ANSI X12 have been the dominant ways of interchanging data between applications. These traditional standards are successfully used by the Fortune 1000 companies, but were not commonly accepted by most of the SMEs. Owing to its flexibility, XML is expected to close this gap. But there is a huge uncertainty among companies. Some are concerned that XML is a threat to their current EDI applications. Others are making technically naive and overly optimistic statements on how XML will replace current EDI standards. Both expectations are not entirely true. In this paper we describe the strengths as well as the limitations of using XML in EDI. By comparing XML with current EDI standard technology, we show where XML still has to learn from EDI standardisation.