Electronic Means

What does 'electronic means' mean ? It could mean a transfer of magnetic tape. In the early days of EDI data was put onto magnetic tape and either posted or sent by courier to the recipient, who then loaded the tape on a tape deck and the computer read it in the system.

This method was fine for a while, but problems arose :

• The tape was being physically sent, and this took time.
• The number of tapes that any one organisation needed to handle was growing, leading to a scheduling problem.
• The tapes themselves were vulnerable
• Often two identical tapes were produced in case one of them could not be processed by the recipient's computer system, thus creating a serious handling problem.

The solution to all of these problem is to send data by telecommunications, and since the early 1980's this has been the increasingly preferred method. However, this method is not without its own problems :

• Timing problem - bilateral computer links require the both organisations schedule the link at the same time.
• Each link costs money
• Any the number of trading partners grows the number of one-to-one links eventually becomes unmanageable .
• Incompatible computer systems