XML Vs. EDI

The first initiative to solve this problem was a standard called 
Electronic Data Interchange, or EDI.  While the goals of EDI where 
lofty, the implementation was less than perfect.  For many companies, 
implementing EDI in their processes was not something that yielded 
much in the way of results.  The same issues of differences in hardware 
and software still existed  Differences in data representation between 
organizations was another major hurdle.  Having a standard for 
content modeling that could be interrogated by software was not part 
of the EDI model.  This required that the software that would use the 
EDI output would have to understand its content model inherently.  
Each company had one or more content models that it would create 
for different things (e.g. purchase orders, proposals, etc.) .  Things 
got real complicated real fast.  A good analogy is that of the telephone.  
The problem with EDI was that each company that wanted to talk to 
each other had to reinvent the telephone for each type of discussion 
they wanted to have.  Needless to say, EDI was not the panacea that 
many envisioned it to be.

XML addresses these issues in the way that it was designed.  It is 
platform independent, it is structured, and it has a mechanism for 
strict content modeling that can be interrogated by any software 
using a standard XML processor.  The result is that companies can 
communicate with each other using XML and engage in business 
to business e-commerce without having to worry about hardware 
and software platform issues, or content modeling issues.  

Many large organizations are now using XML for such things as 
requests for proposals, purchase orders and transaction records to 
name a few.  Since XML is designed for use with Internet protocols, 
the Internet has become the medium for transferring this XML data 
back and forth.  The Internet is becoming the ideal place to do 
business to business e-commerce.