EDIFACT messaging standard

EDIFACT is an international standard for EDI trading in commercial and non-commercial sectors. EDIFACT has an underlying syntax, which is an ISO standard. Within that syntax, there are directories of data elements, composite data elements, segments, and messages. There are conventions for placing messages in an "envelope" which identifies the sender and receiver and other attributes of a transmission. For more information on the EDIFACT messaging standard, see the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business Web site and click "Standards" on the left side.

EDIFACT messages can be modeled using the MRM Tagged/Delimited String Format (TDS)

The high level structure of an EDIFACT message is shown below.



You can model the top level interchange of an EDIFACT message by setting the following properties for the complex type on which the message is based:

Composition = Sequence
Content Validation = Closed
Tag Data Separator = <EDIFACT_TAGDATA_SEP>
Data Element Separation = Tagged Delimited
Delimiter = <EDIFACT_CS>

Within an EDIFACT message, you can define the delimiters to be used in the message itself using the optional Service String Advice element. To enable this element to be recognized as an EDIFACT Service String, you must set the element property Interpret Element Value to EDIFACT Service String. You must also set the delimiter values to the mnemonic values that are defaulted when you set the Message Standard property to EDIFACT.

A predefined message set solution for EDIFACT can be purchased from IBM.

Related concepts
Message modeling
The message model
TDS format: Relationship to the logical model
Related tasks
Developing message models
Working with message model objects
Related reference
Message model reference information
Message model object properties
Additional MRM domain information
Additional TDS information
TDS Industry standard formats