The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) environment uses standardized formats when data is exchanged between trading partners. These standard formats, or standards, provide the format and data content of EDI messages. While standards allow trading partners with diverse applications to exchange data, implementing these standards brings with it the hazard of exchanging data erroneously.
To prevent bad data exchange, each standard includes detailed documentation of compliance functionality, both from a business perspective and from a standards perspective. These functional definitions are documented in the standard in the form of segment notes, syntax notes, and semantic notes for each segment. These notes ensure that the segments and elements within a specific EDI message conform to the rules and regulations that were established for that specific transaction in that specific version of that specific standard.
