Open-edi is an initiative of the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC30 committee. It's Australian TAG is Standards Australia IT11/7. The prime thrust of this initiative is to enable Electronic Commerce using Open-edi to be established between intending trading partners without the need for up front trading or interchange agreements. The target is to make short term and ad hoc trading relationships practical.
The ICARIS project is looking at ways of achieving direct interoperation of Business Information Systems in an open environment and is therefore interested in this initiative.
Study of the proposed methodology as set out in ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC30/CD14662 reveals several areas of impracticality and it is not at all clear how up front agreements can be eliminated. A revised methodology and standards framework, devised by the ICARIS project, was proposed by the Australian TAG to SC30 in March, 1996. This innovation introduced the concept of Object Technology which is now a part the Open-edi strategy and has followed through into EDIFACT "future directions" thinking by AC.1 in OO-edi. This document is available for download and comment.
A recent innovation of the ICARIS project is a simpler, much more practical and more versatile technology than Open-edi which, in addition, incorporates an elegant ability to operate in an open environment (no upfront agreements between trading partners involved).
This improved approach has been named Business Systems Interoperation (BSI). BSI is a generic solution (not restricted to EDI as is Open-edi) to facilitate the interoperation of autonomous, heterogenious business systems. Among the many applications for BSI is Data warehousing, Business Systems Integration. BSI overcomes the identified problems inherent in the traditional approach to EDI, the impracticalities of Open-edi and the mysticism of EDIFACT's OO-edi. It also permits much greater flexibility and productivity for Web Commerce operators.