Data Herding - The art of EDI

Do you have to exchange data with your customers? Is your phone constantly ringing (or being emailed or text-ed) asking about files that should have been sent or received but are nowhere to be found?

There are common pitfalls whenever files are exchanged between systems. Either with your customer's external system or between different systems within the same company. There are also common patterns that can be followed to avoid these problems. It is very possible to create a self monitoring system that will 'just work', and let you know about issues before your trading partner or your internal business unit even knows anything is amiss. This book can help you with data exchanges rather you are using an expensive third party product, or a series of shell scripts that have been hacked together over time.

Keith Wood has been exchanging data between systems for over eighteen years. He has made all of the mistakes and paid the tolls. If you follow the advice given here it can help you avoid going down some of the same bad roads.