Page 29 - GAO-02-327 Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language

Chapter 1: Background: Features and Current
Federal Use of XML

Figure 5: Typical Flow of Business Transactions Based on EDI Standards

Source: Department of Defense.

XML has the potential to lower costs for data exchange because it can take
advantage of the Internet’s communications infrastructure and protocols. 6
EDI, on the other hand, was developed before the Internet became
commonplace and thus has generally involved buying customized software
and setting up expensive, private communications networks. These
features have some advantages: the dedicated links associated with private
communications networks are generally more reliable than a simple
Internet connection, and the condensed format of EDI transactions makes
it possible to transmit them much more efficiently than XML documents.
However, the expense involved in attaining this capability is likely
prohibitive for many applications. Table 3 provides a summary
comparison of the major features of EDI and XML.

6
Widely used Internet protocols include Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for
electronic mail, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for the World Wide Web, File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) for file transfer, and others.

Page 25 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government