— Foundations
EDI Foundations
Five doorways into EDI, no detours: what the acronym actually covers, how it differs from a plain B2B exchange, how an interchange travels between two companies, which protocols secure that transport, and which standards normalise the messages themselves. The path below is designed to be read in order — each page opens the next.
Where to start, by role
Four guided itineraries. Pick the one that matches your intent — each step opens the next.
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Newcomer
I’m discovering EDI
From the acronym to your first message, no prerequisites. Read in order.
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Developer
I’m integrating EDI
Anatomy, a real message, a validator, then going to production.
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Architect / SRE
I’m operating an EDI hub
Architecture, security, observability, resilience at scale.
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Decision-maker
I’m choosing a solution
Standards, mandates, compliance: decide with the full picture.
The suggested path
Five steps to read in order — from the acronym to the standards landscape. Each page opens the next.
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01 — Definition
What is EDI?
The definition of Electronic Data Interchange, its scope, its three distinctive characteristics and its historical roots.
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02 — Framing
B2B vs EDI
Why EDI is a strict subset of B2B, where the transactional perimeter stops, and what distinguishes a machine-to-machine exchange from a plain file transfer.
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03 — Flow
How an interchange flows
From ERP generation to syntactic acknowledgment: the steps of an EDI exchange, the envelopes, the receipts, the actors involved.
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04 — Transport
Protocols overview
AS2, OFTP2, SFTP, AS4, VAN. Which protocol fits which use case, and why transport is never a trivial decision.
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05 — Landscape
Standards landscape
EDIFACT, X12, cXML, OCI, UBL, PEPPOL. An orientation map telling you which one applies to which market, sector, and operation.
Go deeper
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06 — Network
The PEPPOL network explained simply
The 4-corner model, the SMP and SML registries, certified Access Points, AS4 eDelivery transport, X.509 certificate security.
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07 — Regulation
EU e-invoicing roadmap 2025-2030
ViDA directive adopted in 2025, national mandates country by country (France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Romania, Poland).
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08 — Healthcare
An introduction to FHIR
FHIR R5 explained for developers coming from commercial EDI or REST APIs: Resources, Bundles, IGs, SMART on FHIR.
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09 — Quality
Testing EDI pipelines
Fixtures, partner mocks, PEPPOL access-point sandboxes, Schematron validators in CI, contract testing. The strategies that work.
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10 — Verticals
Industry verticals and EDI: 2026 landscape
Retail, automotive, healthcare, banking, energy, public sector, logistics. Dominant standards and pivotal flows per sector.
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11 — Arbitration
API vs EDI: practical decision tree
Five criteria to ask in order (partner, mandate, frequency, semantics, contractual) and a decision tree to orient the choice.
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12 — Security
EDI flows security 2026: defense in depth
Transport, payload signature, data at rest, audit and post-quantum roadmap. Five layers that reinforce each other.
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13 — Compliance
Cross-jurisdiction e-invoicing compliance 2026
A decision matrix for multinationals: Europe (ViDA), Americas, APAC, MENA. Timeline and workstream prioritisation.
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14 — Measurement
EDI metrics: SLO, error budgets, KPIs
Latency p50/p95/p99, success rate, dropped messages, MDN time-to-ack, OTIF per partner. Google SRE framework applied to a 2026 EDI hub.
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15 — Onboarding
EDI partner onboarding playbook
Seven repeatable steps: discovery, spec exchange, cert exchange, AS2/AS4 setup, testing, go-live, monitoring. Deliverables, RACI and exit criteria.
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16 — Team
Modern EDI team organisation
Roles, RACI, automation skills, Partner Success ownership, Platform team vs stream-aligned. Team Topologies applied to EDI.
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17 — Compliance
Compliance by design: GDPR/AI Act/NIS2
Bake compliance in from the design phase: GDPR article 25, AI Act August 2024, NIS2 January 2023. Four operational principles and their EDI implications.
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18 — Residency
Multi-country data residency strategies
GDPR, Swiss FADP, Brazilian LGPD, Schrems II, Data Privacy Framework, SecNumCloud, GAIA-X. Four architecture models for multi-jurisdiction hubs.
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19 — Observability
EDI monitoring stack: OpenTelemetry + Grafana
OpenTelemetry for unified signals, Grafana stack or managed (Datadog, New Relic), EDI instrumentation patterns, RED + USE for SLO dashboards, cost control.
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20 — AI
AI-augmented EDI ops: LLM, RAG, anomaly detection
LLM assistance for root cause analysis, RAG over runbooks and partner docs, real-time anomaly detection, operational guardrails and AI Act compliance.
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24 — Continuity
Disaster Recovery for EDI stacks
Realistic RTO and RPO per partner flow, cold/warm/hot/active-active topologies, in-flight message handling, switchover runbook, chaos engineering game day.
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25 — Capacity
Capacity planning for B2B peaks
Little's Law applied to an EDI hub, appropriate headroom, autoscaling limits for AS4/OFTP2, realistic load tests, broker/DB/network sizing, ViDA 2030 peak.
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26 — E-invoicing
E-invoicing go-live playbook
From zero to go-live: map the obligation, choose the channel (PEPPOL/PDP/clearance), the identifiers, the CII/UBL format, EN 16931 validation, testing, receipts and rejections. The e-invoicing counterpart of EDI onboarding.