Product Overview EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is the exchange of information between trading partners where the information is formatted according to a set of common data format standards developed in the U.S. and Western Europe during the late 1970s. EDI standards describe the format of the data that is to be exchanged. These standards are independent of the transport. The other EDI protocols contained in this software package (EDIFACT, X12, TEXT, TRADACOMS, and Gateway) offer a rich set of functions that cannot be altered by users. Service Protocol The Service protocol compliments the other EDI protocols by providing an inside view into how users can handle interactions and achieve their goals by providing their own service implementations for functionality that they can extend. Service is a framework service provided for EDI to access information from BusinessConnect to aggregate information as required by their business. Since services can be implemented by end users, the design is flexible and open. It can be used by anyone, within the limits of TIBCO BusinessConnect. The Service protocol supports only Notify operations. To learn how to define a new Notify operation and deploy it, see Defining a Notify Operation.