scope:

This workshop agreement is intended as a guideline for the exchange of business documents between companies by electronic communication (EDI). Since every company has a multitude of business relationships it is important to keep this communication easy to handle. Especially for small and medium sized enterprises a new approach is necessary because the efforts to handle bilateral communication channels are too heavy. The idea is to route the communication through a central platform in the Internet where only the data format is used which is described in this workshop agreement. The data format must be lightweight (to enable companies of all sizes to communicate) and free of redundancies (so the semantics are clear). Both aspects are not possible with traditional data formats like EDIFACT.