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Re: EDI Mime body part

1993-10-26 15:30:55
Dave,

I applaud your initiative in writing a draft for an EDI body part.
It is something that is very much needed.  The organization of the
body-part you describe conflicts with or is redundant with the envelope
of the EDI it is to contain.  Here are the issues that I see:

1. The subtype name EDI-X12 is overly specific.  EDI standards other
   than X12, such as EDIFACT, are in common use, especially outside the
   US.  

2. The TS parameter is inappropriate.  The outermost envelope of an
   EDI transmission is called an interchange.  Interchanges can and do
   contain multiple transactions of different types.  The types of the
   transactions are identified by the envelope of the individual
   transaction.

3. There are some optional parameters that would be useful to have.
   Some entities use variants or industry specific version of the
   major standards.  Since there is no way of indicating the use of a
   variant in an EDI header, this could be useful information.  It
   would be useful to have standard and version as parameters.

4. Though a relatively new feature, both the X12 and EDIFACT standards
   have provisions for digital signatures and encryption of EDI
   transactions within the EDI envelope.  It would be redundant to develop
   separate mechanisms for these purposes in the mime body part.

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