Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a method oftransferring electronic data in a predefined format from one computerapplication to another over a communications link.

EDI standards are formats for EDI documents that specify what informationgoes where within an EDI document. Your industry or trading partnersdetermine which EDI standard you must use. These EDI standards includeANSI X.12 EDIFACT TRADACOMS VDA and GENCOD.

There are two types of EDI standards:

• Proprietary standard?EDI standard developed for a specificcompany or industry. This is also called a non-public or private standard.
• Public standard?EDI standard developed for use across oneor more industries.

Non-EDI routing is the transfer of data that does not fitinto a predefined EDI standard. Non-EDI data can include the followingtypes of files:

• Fixed-length flat files
• Variable-length flat files (such as .csv files)
• XML files
• Binary files (such as .pdf files)

Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork performstwo types of non-EDI processing:

• Content-based
• Context-based

Content-based routing enables Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork todynamically define flat-file formats for processing during implementation.This enables you to use other Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork servicessuch as carbon copy alert services and translation services. Datacan be batched and parsed like standard EDI data. Data that uses content-basedrouting also can be sent through the same mailbox as EDI data or througha separate mailbox.

Context-based routing enables the Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork topass unstructured or binary data to trading partners based on thecontext of how the data is sent to the network. Data that uses context-basedrouting can also use specific services such as carbon copy translationand document tracking. For context-based routing the carbon-copyservice only works at the mailslot level and document tracking worksonly at the file level.

Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork handleselectronic data in virtually any standard or format. However theformat of your data affects which services Sterling B2B CollaborationNetwork canprovide to you. Services such as Sterling Document Tracking andreports are available for both content- and context-based routingbut with different levels of detail.