Dr A. Sloane
School of Computing and Information Technology
University of Wolverhampton
Lichfield Street
WOLVERHAMPTON
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Full text of paper presented at panel session on 'Vulnerability of the Electronic Cottage', IFIP '92 World Computer Congress, Madrid, September 10th, 1992.
The use of electronic data interchange (EDI) using structured messages has long been a tool of business and commerce. The extension of these EDI services to the home is investigated, along with the expansion of services to include some that are more relevant to the individual user. The corresponding use of other data types is also included to give added functionality to message types and provide new structures for further applications. The services are discussed with reference to the home environment.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been available for a number of years but has been confined to the business environment. This has led to its neglect in terms of research and academic input. Consequently, the development of EDI has not been as rapid as some other areas of computing. There are, however, other factors to take into account, including the diversity of 'standards' and the non-interconnection of various networks used for EDI. If these problems were solved, then there would be a clearer way forward for EDI technology and new applications. The extension of EDI from the business environment is a straightforward task. The political, social and economic will to do it, is not immediately apparent.
EDI can be defined as 'The transmission of information between computer applications, using structured messages, without human intervention.' In other words it involves the automatic transfer of information from one computer to another.
The applications that currently use EDI are all associated with the business world mainly invoices and orders that can be exchanged automatically between suppliers and customers. This necessitates the two parties contracting an agreement to trade electronically and also the use of an agreed 'protocol' to do the interchange of data.
This method of trading has some well documented advantages [1] which have various timescales of return. Unfortunately, there is currently a shortfall in the number of users of EDI systems which does not allow a 'critical mass' to develop. This leads to the situation where the benefits of using EDI are not as great as they should be if the 'critical mass' had been reached. Any extension of the user base of EDI would therefore be helpful to the systems and their providers. This would then lead to the technology being of greater viability.
EDI currently uses structured messages to communicate data between computer systems. These messages are defined by the relevant standard which is used for the communication, this could be EDIFACT [2], ANSI X12 [3], TDI [4] or some other standard. All the standards do, however, use the structure of the message to limit the scope of the message, i.e. the structure removes the redundancy that would occur in a free text message and lead to easier processing.
This important aspect of EDI is the crucial factor that makes it an applicable tool in new environments such as the electronic cottage.
The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has published a standard for EDI messages, EDIFACT,(ISO 9735), which has generally been accepted to be the standard for convergence in the future.
This will allow any EDI user to transmit a message to any other EDI user on any system, provided that the two users networks are connected and can exchange EDI messages. Whilst this is a relatively simple technical problem, it does give rise to some issues in the political/economic arena that have not aided the spread of EDI outside the user communities that have built up on the industrial and commercial sectors of their original networks.
EDIFACT is, therefore, the way forward for EDI systems at an international level, and it would appear that there is little benefit in alternative standards at a national, regional or sectoral level, since the interworking of EDI systems is also a future requirement for expansion.
Wider EDIFACT usage will allow the development of new messages giving wider acceptability and functionality to the current systems. The expansion of the user base will also lead to an increase in demand for new messages/services and consequently add to the functional requirements of the system. This addition of functionality will lead to more comprehensive usage of current systems and greater benefits for users.
The electronic cottage is seen as the new way to work [5], to release the resources used by commuting and travel to work, and to direct the appropriate technology towards enhancing and extending the quality of life for office-based work. The other side of the coin is the increase in the leisure services available electronically, thereby giving an all-round increase in the facilities to the electronic home. To enhance these services further there needs to be a simple interface that provides unambiguous commands and instructions to the systems that are currently installed in the business environments, with which people interact. e.g banks, shops, insurance companies, public utilities and other commercial operations.
The electronic cottage may seem distant but the technology is currently available to perform the necessary functions of daily life. However, the finer technical details still need to be decided. This is where the structured message technology of EDI systems will be of benefit to the electronic cottage.
The extension of EDI systems to the level of the home requires a change in the applicability of the messages that are used in EDI. There needs to be new message types and forms for use in the home that differ from the commercial messages in a number of ways. The EDIFACT standard allows the combination of messages into functional groups that allow the inclusion of many messages. This is unlikely to be a required feature in the use of EDI in the home. The main requirement for home systems will be the individual message to one supplier or service provider. e.g. the EDI remittance or order. Another requirement, of home systems is the ability to use personal cross references when undertaking an EDI transaction, such that the payment for goods and services can automatically be generated when the invoice is received and acknowledged, or at some other stage. There could also be a security mechanism for customers and suppliers using the inclusion of a personal credit rating (based on bank balance, available credit etc) and a password that can be used at the time of ordering.
The provision of home EDI does not restrict the systems to the form that predominates in industry. The structured message can be a much more powerful tool than it is currently.
The provision of information to the home is still a basic requirement for the electronic cottage to become a popular alternative. The current systems that are available fulfil part of the promise of the information age, but often the interface to these systems is unique and non-standard giving the user the combined problems of learning and added cost. The use of a structured message interface to databases and other information providers would alleviate some of this problem by distributing the processing requirements between the user and the information provider.
A similar situation occurs in the filed of home banking as it does in the provision of information for use in the home. There is a difficulty with the banks and financial institutions requiring additional security measures, but with this in place there is scope for the use of EDI in financial transactions. Indeed the commercial EDI community already has the capability to include financial transactions within EDI and this allows the EDI user to cut stock levels and re-order lead-times so that just-in- time processing can become a reality. In the home-based EDI system this quick turn-round may not be a priority, but the supplier and user will both gain from the increased level of automatic processing in the transaction.
The further extension to the financial markets is also a viable technical option, but the political hurdle may prove to be the barrier to increased availability to the home users. A third party intervention may be seen to be the way to progress in this as in some other application areas. e.g. in the purchase of stocks or shares.
The security aspects of EDI are the same as with any other transmission of data that is performed electronically. The messages that are sent need to be proved to be from an authenticated source and they need to be proved to be correct when they arrive. The use of EDI and structured messages is therefore an additional source of error correcting or detecting capability in the transmission process. The structure itself can be used as a tool for reliable transmission along with the other levels of error control used by the underlying protocol hierarchy. Added to this are the security measures that can be imposed by the message originator, this would make this form of EDI more secure from forgery or alteration by interception. A simple encoding of a checksum with the personal password would make alteration easily detectable, whereas forgery would require knowledge of the password. The use of public-key cryptography would further enhance the security of messages where appropriate.
The area of home shopping is another application that can easily be transferred to an EDI system. The ordering and payment for goods and services can be arranged electronically. The further benefits of the system are in the expansion of facilities that can be envisaged when the critical mass of suppliers using EDI systems is reached. The ability to send multiple messages for automatic quotations gives the single home user the same facility as the larger organisation asking for tenders. That is the ability to request up-to-date pricing and specification from the suppliers own systems. This would then allow the home user to select the goods on the basis of the best offer and allow the updating of suppliers figures to take account of changes in supply and demand.
The modern world is becoming increasingly complex, with the options that are available being increasingly difficult to assess. This is, partly, due to the increasing use of computers to provide the suppliers with predictions of possible outcomes. This complexity, however, does not always help the consumer, who has a choice to make, often without complete information. The use of EDI messages could alleviate this complexity to a certain degree in the field of personal documentation. There are a number of databases of personal information that contain various items of, often sensitive, information about people. The need for these to be as up-to- date as possible is often dependent on the response of the people whose records are contained on the system. The use of EDI structured messages will enable a user to send any change in circumstances to all the relevant databases with a single message, providing that the network supports the forwarding, redirection and distribution list approach to message handling. Much personal data is often a repeat of the same basic items such as name, address and date-of-birth, the ability to make changes to these and related items would provide a powerful tool for users to have control over their own personal information.
The use of EDI structured messages as outlined in the above sections gives a brief description of how a technology used primarily for the transfer of commercial 'documents' can be extended for use in the home environment, giving an indication of how these extensions can be used and the various applications of this technology to the electronic cottage. For future extensions to this technology the users and suppliers will need to provide new message structures to perform the tasks that are required. This could include the provision of new message content types to give text, graphic, picture and other data formats. This could then lead to the increased use of the system for the exchange of information without the necessity for there to be a 'transaction' involved. The use of structures would aid the provider and the user of the information in giving an appropriate vehicle for the exchange of data.
The commercial world has long held EDI to be the way forward, but none of the system providers or users has extended the concept to the level of the individual user, or extended the services beyond a reactive approach to business use, depending largely on current practice for a model. The use of structured messages provides benefits for the user and the supplier of services in that it extends the customer base and the requirement for services and products for the system itself. The concept of EDI is simple, but to extend it beyond the office or business into the home will provide the electronic cottage of the future with a system of transaction messages which will provided simpler, more secure and more accurate information transfer in an environment that is diverse and unstructured, i.e the home.
[1] EDI in perspective : EUR 11883 : Commission of the European Communities , ISBN 92-825-9874-8
[2] EDIFACT :ISO 9735 International Organisation for Standardisation, Geneva 1990
[3] ANSI X12 : EDI message format, American National Standards Institute
[4] UN TDI : United Nations Trade Data Interchange Format
[5] J Nilles, Teleworking from home, in "The Information Technology Revolution", edited by. T Forester, ISBN 0-631 13438-7
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