What is United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT)

This chapter presents the challenges faced when developing and using standard formats for electronic business document exchange and tries to identify the real values and costs. As a reference it takes the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) and demonstrates how, despite the challenges, UBL can provide a common bridging format (sometimes called a “lingua franca”) for exchanging business information between different communities.