What is structured data ? How is it different from the printed document ? Is it the same as electronic mail ?
Let us look at the last two questions first, printed documents and electronic mail are designed for humans, they can be easily created and acted upon by humans, but EDI requires that the computer system itself can easily generate and process messages, so the data format is designed for computers, which as usual, implies that it in not very readible for humans. Clearly, therefore, EDI is not the same as either printer documents or electronic mail.