About the UN/EDIFACT OTD Library

The United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange (UN/EDIFACT) for Administration, Commerce and Transport protocol was developed for the electronic exchange of machine-readable information between businesses.

The UN/EDIFACT Working Group (EWG) develops, maintains, interprets, and promotes the use of the UN/EDIFACT standard.

UN/EDIFACT messages are structured according to very strict rules. Messages are in ASCII format. The standard defines all these message elements, their sequence, and also their grouping.

UN/EDIFACT publishes the messages for each version separately from the envelopes (header and trailer segments) that are used with those messages.

The messages are available online at:

http://www.gefeg.com/en/standard/edifact/edifact.htm

The envelopes are available online at:

http://www.gefeg.com/jswg/

A new version of UN/EDIFACT messages is released several times a year, containing most of the messages in the previous version, plus any new messages that have been approved by the standards organization. The envelopes are updated with a new version infrequently.

UN/EDIFACT messages have a message structure, which indicates how data elements are organized and related to each other for a particular EDI transaction. In the ICAN Suite, message structures are defined as OTDs. Each OTD consists of the following:

• Physical hierarchy: The predefined way in which envelopes, segments, and data elements are organized to describe a particular UN/EDIFACT EDI transaction.

• Delimiters: The specific predefined characters that are used to mark the beginning and end of envelopes, segments, and data elements.

• Properties: The characteristics of a data element, such as the length of each element, default values, and indicators that specify attributes of a data element—for example, whether it is required, optional, or repeating.

The message level structure of an invoice that is sent from one trading partner to another defines the header, trailer, segments, and data elements required by invoice transactions. The UN/EDIFACT OTD Library for a specific version includes message level structures for each of the transactions available in that version. You can use these structures as provided, or customize them to suit your business needs.

eGate Integrator uses OTDs based on UN/EDIFACT message structures to verify that the data in the messages coming in or going out is in the correct format. There is a message structure for each UN/EDIFACT transaction.

The list of transactions provided is different for each version of UN/EDIFACT.

The UN/EDIFACT OTD Library provides UN/EDIFACT OTDs that you can use to build ICAN Projects for interfacing with UN/EDIFACT systems. You can use the OTDs standalone with eGate Integrator or in combination with eXchange Integrator, eGate Integrator, and the UN/EDIFACT Manager Composite Application.