• ANSI X12
• American National Standards Institute
• ANSI X12 defines standards for documents used by the ocean, rail, air, or tracking industries
• ANSI X12 Transaction Set Summary
• UN/EDIFACT
• United Nations Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Transport
• UN/EDIFACT Transaction Set Summary
• PROPRIETARY
• Mutually defined file format between two or more trading partners
• Proprietary formats generally can not be distributed via VAN's since there is no standard addressing format. Proprietary files are usually traded via FTP or email.

Communication Platforms

ASI has established a communication platform to exchange information with its business partners:

ASI will exchange information with its business partner through a third-party's network communication gateway. The data must be exchanged in a mutually agreed standard format. ASI will collect and process information every 15 minutes

ASI will act as FTP Server, FTP Client, or both. If ASI acts as server, and the client wishes to retrieve (get) files, it is the clients responsibility to remove or move all collected files to an archive. ASI will process and remove all recieved (put) files every 5 minutes. ASI will create and transmit EDI transactions every 10 minutes.

The most efficent method of file transfer is where everybody "put"s and nobody "get"s. Each computer system initiates a connection and "put"s the data on the remote system immediately after the data is generated. The system which generates the data acts as client and the recieving system acts as host. Thus, both parties act as host and client, and queues are at an absolute minimum.