A Quick Introduction

to EDICreated 3/5/2002

American Electric Power

What Is EDI?

Electronic Data InterchangeAn internationally recognized standard for formatting and exchanging informationSimple text files that use delimiter characters to separate the fields and records

ANSIANSI (American National Standards Institute) continues to define and revise the standards and versions which valid EDI data

must conform to…

Standards and Versions Used By AE P

Version 3010(older form at )

C C D + p a ym e n ts fo r D IP R

Version 4010(current form at)

P u rcha se O rd e rsIn vo ices

Version 4030(newer form at)

N o t ye t u se d by A E P

ANSI X12C o m m on S ta nd a rd

An example of raw EDI dataISA*00* *00* *01*026007906 *01*006979868

*020124*0650*U*00401*000000590*1*P*~GS*IN*026007906*006979868*20020124*0650*590*X*004010ST*810*5900001BIG*20020123*367498**PX02-0000000081**00*DIN1*RE*Airgas-Mid America*1*026007906N3*PO BOX 1117N4*Bowling Green*KY*421021117ITD*08**0**0**30*00**00**Net 30 DaysIT1*001*24*CF*40.1953************VP*AC 5 M02PID*F****ACETYLENE SIZE 5TDS*97749*00*00*00CAD*****OUR TRUCK;YSAC*C*C040***850*******06SE*12*5900001GE*1*590IEA*1*000000590

Envelope Segments

ISA GS

ST DataData

SE GE

IEA

EDI transactions are surrounded by 6 envelope segments. These segments contain important routing information, such as ids, version, and transaction type.

ISA/IEA – Interchange EnvelopeISA/IEA – Interchange EnvelopeContains an entire transmission

GS/GE – Group EnvelopeGS/GE – Group EnvelopeContains one group of similar transactions (e.g., multiple purchase orders)

ST/SE – Transaction Set EnvelopeST/SE – Transaction Set EnvelopeContains data that describes one single transaction (e.g., one pay order)

Reading a segment of data

BIG*20020123*367498**PX02-BIG*20020123*367498**PX02-0000000081**00*DI0000000081**00*DI

Segment Identifer First few characters of each segment BIG

Element Delimiter Separates each field in a segment *

Empty Field Field in which no data was sent; results in an error when that field is required

**

Qualifier Often a two or three digit code that is meant to describe another field

DI

Other key pieces of information found in this specific example are purchase order number, invoice number, and invoice date.