More
About E-Catalogues
What
is happening in the area of Electronic Catalogues?
In
December 1996 EAN International launched an Electronic Catalogues
project which aimed to create recommendations to assist EAN Numbering
Organizations (around the world), or other parties, to set up Electronic
Catalogues. The work of the project team was concentrated in the
trade sector (retail, general merchandise, wholesale, manufacturing,
distribution, etc.).
The
results of this activity were published in June 1998 (updated June
1999) in the document "Electronic
Catalogues: EAN Recommendations". This document included
non-technical information about Electronic Catalogues specific issues
and explanations on the use of EANCOM® to support the exchange
of data between catalogues. In addition the document detailed "The
Basic Common Set of Information" required to establish an Electronic
Catalogue.
Upon
publication, this document was endorsed by the ECR Europe EDI project
which was also investigating the subject of master data alignment
using Electronic Catalogues. The results of this investigation found
that unless corrective action was taken, the speed of data pool
development would result in a situation where the interoperation
of these services would not be possible in the future.
To
address this issue, the ECR Europe EDI committee launched the Inter-Operability
of Data Pools (IODP) project with a mandate to firstly, identify
the user company requirements for data pool inter-operability, and
secondly, to produce recommendations on how to make inter-operability
a reality (Note: in this context data pool = electronic catalogue).
The
ECR Europe IODP project team identified a set of key criteria which
it believed would enable data pool inter-operability. The details
of these key criteria follow.
- Common
Set of Information
- Common
Set of Rules and Functions
- Common
EANCOM® Message Layouts
- A
Neutral Guardian
Following
a study of three possible scenarios for data pool inter-operability,
the project team finally decided on a scenario which recommended the
creation of a network of identical inter-operated Data Pools which
were organised in such a way that it created a single logical International
Data Pool.
The
results of the work of the Inter-Operability of Data Pools project
are available in the ECR Europe
publication "Inter-Operability of EAN compliant Data Pools".
To
make sure that the work of the EAN International Electronic Catalogues
and the ECR Europe Inter-Operability of Data Pools projects progressed,
EAN International established a project made up of experts from
the previous two projects to investigate how to realise the ECR
Europe vision on inter-operability.
This
project called the Global Data Alignment Service (GDAS) attempted
to address the key criteria of the ECR Europe project. The results
of this work will be published in February 2000. To continue to
move this subject forward, it is expected that EAN International
will announce another phase to this project during the first quarter
of 2000.
For more details and reservation please contact Technical Department, Eng. Ahmed A. Hassan,
email: ahmad_hassan@eanegypt.com
|
