The information technology for EDI over Internet with multimedia capability - A collaboration model using SMTP and mail agent in business applications

Abstract

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has long been regarded as an efficient way to reduce the paper work with fast business information communication in the Value Added Network (VAN) environment. However, EDI are basically designed for the description of the text type data and does not support the multimedia information. With the booming of the Internet, VAN is apparently with much less popularity and limited accessibility and business globalization is in an inevitable trend. To reach the potential customers easier and faster through the wide accessible Internet, making business on the Internet has much lower cost than on the VAN. As long as the security issue could be well guarded with reliable connection, e-commerce will become main business model in the near future. To achieve this goal, an approach by using widely existing e-mail system in the business environment is developed, In this paper, we propose a complete business EDIINT (electronic data interchange over Internet) through e-mail system by supporting UN/EDIFACT and MIME for-mats and prove its feasibility and flexibility. In addition, multimedia service and applications are also provided.