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Regarding EDI and EAI

Former Member
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Hello Masters,

What makes exact differecnce between the EDI and EAI. Please if possible take simple example and explain in simple manner.

Thank You

Accepted Solutions (0)

Answers (4)

Answers (4)

aashish_sinha
Active Contributor
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Hi,

EDI is just a specification of data storage format. It could not perform the actual system integration as XI does. for transfer of EDI from one system to another EDI subsystems are used.

Suppose there r 2 organizations A & B. And there is a group of organizations G. Now all the organizations in G has decided that they will be exchanging the data amongst them using EDI format. So whatever data the organizations have, is converted into EDI format based on certain rules like SEF (Standard Exchange Format). Now if A wants to communiate with B, they can communicate directly using data in EDI format.

Suppose A wants to communicate with C which is not a part of G, then EDI subsystems are used. XI could replace EDI subsystems using some Adapters such as Seeburger EDI Adapter or through developing ur own module for reading EDI. But XI shouldnt be compared with EDI directly.

Regards

Aashish Sinha

PS : reward points if helpful

Former Member
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Hi

EAI stands for Enterprise Application integration . Its a category of systems which acts as middleware tool. Its a classifiaction. LIke SAP PI/XI , Tibco , SAP BC, Microsoft Bizware are all middlewares and are EAI.

EDI is Electronic data interchange, which is a way or media of exchanging data electonically. there are different EDI protocols like EDIFACT, ANSI X12, SAANA.

In simple words difference can be explained as

An EAI middleware tool like XI can exchange messages with an EDI system (A system understanding any of the EDI protocols mentioned above) using EDIFACT protocol for example.

EDI:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Interchange

EAI:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_application_integration

it's like a difference between an FTP and protocol

FTP is also a protocol but protocol is much bigger

Thanks

Virkanth

Former Member
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Hi Ravi Kumar,

EAI:

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is defined as the uses of software and computer systems architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.

Supply chain management applications (for managing inventory and shipping), customer relationship management applications (for managing current and potential customers), business intelligence applications (for finding patterns from existing data from operations), and other types of applications (for managing data such as human resources data, health care, internal communications, etc) typically cannot communicate with one another in order to share data or business rules. For this reason, such applications are sometimes referred to as islands of automation or information silos. This lack of communication leads to inefficiencies, wherein identical data are stored in multiple locations, or straightforward processes are unable to be automated.

Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the process of linking such applications within a single organization together in order to simplify and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible, while at the same time avoiding having to make sweeping changes to the existing applications or data structures. EAI is the u201Cunrestricted sharing of data and business processes among any connected application or data sources in the enterprise.u201D[1]

One large challenge of EAI is that the various systems that need to be linked together often reside on different operating systems, use different database solutions and different computer languages, and in some cases are legacy systems that are no longer supported by the vendor who originally created them. In some cases, such systems are dubbed "stovepipe systems" because they consist of components that have been jammed together in a way that makes it very hard to modify them in any way.

EAI can be used for different purposes:

Data (information) Integration: Ensuring that information in multiple systems is kept consistent. This is also known as EII (Enterprise Information Integration).

Process Integration: Linking business processes across applications.

Vendor independence: Extracting business policies or rules from applications and implementing them in the EAI system, so that even if one of the business applications is replaced with a different vendor's application, the business rules do not have to be re-implemented.

Common Facade: An EAI system could front-end a cluster of applications, providing a single consistent access interface to these applications and shielding users from having to learn to interact with different applications

EDI:

An inter-company, application-to-application communication of data in standard format for business transactions, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a set of standards for structuring information that is to be electronically exchanged between and within businesses, organizations, government entities and other groups. The standards describe structures that emulate documents, for example purchase orders to automate purchasing. The term EDI is also used to refer to the implementation and operation of systems and processes for creating, transmitting, and receiving EDI documents.

if found worth pls do the req

Thanx

Sampath

Former Member
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http://eai.ittoolbox.com/topics/t.asp?t=377&p=377&h1=377

chk it

Edited by: Soumyasanto Sen on Jun 26, 2008 9:28 AM