Understanding EDI Transactions
EDI is a mechanism by which business data is transferred between a trading partner and a business application. A trading partner can be either a specific target organization, such as a supplier or a customer, or a specific application such as PeopleSoft Billing. To integrate with third-party trading partners, merchants, and other external systems more effectively, PeopleSoft provides service operations as an enterprise integration point (EIP).
Service operations use the PeopleSoft Integration Broker to integrate PeopleSoft applications with each other and with third-party applications. It enables applications to send data, which multiple processes can receive. These processes can be located on the same database and server, or on another database and server. It works in an asynchronous environment, which means that the sender does not need to be connected to the receiver when sending the data. This is comparable to the way email uses queues to guarantee the delivery of a message to its subscribers.
The Integration Broker service operations offer an automated, timely, and efficient way to send data across systems. Service operations help to synchronize data that is stored in different systems, enables system-to-system workflow, and supports business-to-business integration through the internet using XML and HTTP.
Note: You can elect to process the EDI transactions so that the resulting output is either an XML message or a flat file.