[iask]

EDI is not hard!!!! Period! Like some file formats, it’s unnecessarily complicated. The biggest problem in this industry is that there’s a monopoly and many companies are being FORCED to use these arcane and costly service providers.

I build and integrate EDI solutions for small/mid and retail juggernauts.

[neolithic]

We're a small business looking into EDI with some of our suppliers, but are finding the pricing quite painful for our level of business when talking to some service providers. Which service providers do you see as arcane and costly?

[iask]

SPS, Truecommerce etc. If you need advise or guidance drop me a message.

[neolithic]

Funny, those are the 2 companies we were speaking to. Would appreciate some advice/guidance, but I'm at a loss as to how I drop you a message here — doesn't seem DM'ing is possible on HN?

[iask]

Connect with me via devsaikan ~the google mail~

[djweis]

It's not hard, it's complex. I spent a few years going through 834 and later at a different company, 811. For the first I embedded a javascript interpreter to do translations. For the second I put most of the logic in the code.

[tester756]

What makes you think that it is unnecessarily complicated?

[iask]

Have you done programming in other languages or worked with other formats other than excel and CSV?

The x12 argument was fine 5-10 years ago. Certainly not now. There are much better structures available.