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UN/EDIFACT is the international EDI standard developed under the United Nations. The acronym stands for United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport. The work of maintenance and further development of this standard is done through UN/CEFACT, the United Nations Centre for Electronic commerce For Administration, Commerce, and Transport under the UN Committee on Trade, Economic and Social Council. EDIFACT has been adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as the ISO 9735 :

• Provides a set of syntax rules to structure data.
• Provides an interactive exchange protocol (I-EDI)
• Provides standard messages (allows multi-country and multi-industry exchange)

Two main organisations deal with EDIFACT:

• TT&L (Travel Tourism And Leisure) - United Nations working group
• PADIS (Passenger And Data Interchange Standard) - IATA and ATA working group

Defined in the IATA SSIM book chapter 8: EDIFACT messages are a common alternative to Teletype messages in the airline industry.

This is an example EDIFACT message used to answer to a product availability request:

UNB+IATB:1+1APPC+LHPPC+940101:0950+1’
UNH+1+PAORES:93:1:IA’
MSG+1:45’
IFT+3+?*XYZCOMPANY AVAILABILITY?*’
ERC+A7V:1:AMD’
IFT+3+NO MORE FLIGHTS’
ODI’
TVL+240493:1000::1220+FRA+JFK+DL+400+C’
PDI++C:3+Y::3+F::1’
APD+74C:0:::6++++++1A’
TVL+240493:1740::2030+JFK+MIA+DL+081+C'
PDI++C:4’
APD+EM2:0:1630::6+++++++DA’
UNT+13+1’
UNZ+1+1’

• ' is a segment terminator
• + is a data element separator
• : is a component data element separator
• * is a repetition separator
• ? is a release character

UNH+1+PAORES:93:1:IA’- This is the header segment. It is required at the start of every message - this one specifies that the message name and version is PAORES 93 revision 1 and it was defined by the organistation IA (IATA).

IFT+3+NO MORE FLIGHTS’ - This is an 'Interactive Free Text' segment containing the text 'NO MORE FLIGHTS'

UNT+13+1’ - This is the tail segment. It indicated that the message sent contains 13 segments.

Structure

EDIFACT has a hierarchical structure. The top level element is referred to a message. A message is a sequence of groups and segments.

A group or segment can be mandatory (M) or conditional (C) and can be specified to repeat, for example C99 would indicate between 0 and 99 repetitions of a segment or group, whereas M99 would mean between 1 and 99 repetitions.

A group, like a message, is a sequence of segments or groups. The first segment/group beneath a group must be mandatory. If the logic of the situation demands it is conditional, then the group itself should be made conditional instead.

Current State of EDIFACT

It seems there is a battle between XML and EDIFACT and XML is winning. An equivalent EDIFACT message will be smaller in size to an XML message but the XML message will be easier to read for a human. This has some benefits in practical application as developers from disparate companies attempt to establish automated communications and troubleshoot systems. Another possible explanation is that compatibility is being favored over performance, since more tools exist to work with XML data than with EDIFACT.

However, EDIFACT is still widely used in the civil aviation and tourism industries and is likely to remain so for some time due to the amount of software making use of it and the need for newer systems to be able to integrate with legacy systems.

See also

• UNEDIFACT

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