Re: EDI over http?

[Matthew James Gering <mgering@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> One is through forms where a human being actually fills out or views a
> form. 

In this case HTTP hasn't anything inherently to do with EDI transmission.

> towards using HTTP as an EDI file transfer protocol. The intent among

> be primarily used by two trading partners to exchange data in a
> real-time, point-to-point fashion. Advantages are obvious.

Okay, I have evidently missed the obvious then -- what are the obvious
advantages.

I can think of two advantages:

* Real-Time response
I question the necessity of this. Could someone please elaborate.

* Session encryption
has security advantages over document encryption only.

And following disadvantages:

* Fault Taulerance
through the use of multiple MX records, it handles transmission to hosts
that are not immediately available, routing around network outages and
unreachable hosts, etc, etc.

* Gateways
SMTP can be gatewayed through Firewalls, gatewayed to other networks and/or
converted to other transport mechanisms such as X.400, etc..

* Congestion
SMTP is friendlier on the network than HTTP.

* Reliability
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks against web servers are far too trivial.

* Efficiency
SMTP is a much more efficient protocol than HTTP, both in file transfer and
server load.