General History and Definitions

AS2 is an extension to Applicability Statement 1 (AS1), the standard for secure message transport based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). The extension from AS1 to AS2 consists mainly of compatibility with HTTP(S ), that is, HTTP with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and S/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME).

Definition of EDI-INT

EDI-INT is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Working Group that exists to document the requirements and best practices for secure, interoperable EDI. The EDI-INT Requirements document contains sufficient background material to give the EDI community an explanation of any Internet-related issues.

The EDI-INT Requirements and Applicability Statements are general in nature, so they can be applied to all types of eBusiness transfers across nonsecure networks. The message payload itself does not have to be EDI. The data being transferred can be in the form of Extensible Markup Language (XML) business documents or any other data format.

Definition of AS1

AS1 is an Applicability Statement that described how then-current Internet standards could be leveraged to achieve EDI-INT using SMTP transport technologies. AS1 was published by the IETF EDI-INT Working Group.

Definition of AS2

AS2 is also an IETF EDI-INT Working Group specification. It extends AS1 to include real-time EDI based on S/MIME and HTTP(S ). AS2 security constructs are the same as AS1, with the addition of session-based cryptographic features and authentication.