About
About ediverse
ediverse.io is an independent, bilingual, open knowledge editorial platform devoted to the standards behind business-to-business data exchange: EDIFACT, X12, cXML, OCI, UBL, PEPPOL, AS2, OFTP2.
Why ediverse exists
Public EDI documentation suffers from three structural problems. First, it is
fragmented: the definition of an ORDERS D.96A message does not live in
the same place as the definition of its BGM segment, which does not live in
the same place as the qualifier code lists used by its composite elements. Second, parts
of it are behind paywalls: X12 Implementation Guides (TR3) require an
ANSI subscription, and the full ISO 9735 syntax norm sits behind the ISO paywall.
Finally, it is ageing: the official sites hosting the UNECE directories
look much as they did in 2002, and several reference resources have disappeared during
institutional migrations.
Readers starting an EDI integration in 2026 deserve better. ediverse offers a reference reading: structured, sourced, verified, legible, freely accessible, and translated into the two working languages of the community.
What ediverse covers
The editorial scope is deliberately broad: the platform aims to document the entire EDI landscape, not a single standard. Four families are in scope:
- Message syntaxes: EDIFACT (UN/CEFACT), X12 (ANSI ASC X12), cXML (Ariba/SAP Business Network), OCI (SAP Open Catalog Interface), UBL (OASIS), and derived profiles such as PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0.
- Transport protocols: AS2 (RFC 4130), AS4, OFTP2 (RFC 5024), AS1, SFTP, and the historic VAN gateways.
- Identifiers and codifications: GLN, DUNS, ICD, plus UN/EDIFACT code sets (qualifiers, code lists).
- Interactive tools: syntactic validators, converters and parsers, running entirely in the browser with no data sent over the network.
Editorial policy
Every page on ediverse meets three strict requirements, inherited from the internal production process and formalised in the source repository:
- Full sourcing: every technical fact cited is tied to a primary source
archived under
content/_sources/. No page can be published without a traceable citation; the build chain refuses orphan content. - No LLM invention: message structures, segment definitions, and composite element codes are never generated from model memory. They are taken from the UNECE directories, cXML DTDs, public X12 indexes, or SAP PDFs; reproduced or summarised according to applicable rights.
- Copyright respect: open specifications (UN/EDIFACT, UBL, PEPPOL) can be covered in full. Proprietary standards (X12 TR3, paid ISO norms) are covered at the conceptual level only, with original didactic examples. See the Disclaimer page for details.
Who is behind ediverse
ediverse is a community editorial project. The initial foundation was conceived and published by a core of EDI practitioners: integrators, exchange architects, e-invoicing consultants. The editorial process is open: every contribution — a correction, a new segment, a translation, an additional example — goes through the public repository and is subject to a documented editorial review, described on the Contribute page.
The project is governed transparently: the entirety of the site source code, the translation dictionaries, and the archived sources lives in a public Git repository. Nothing is edited off the record.
Bilingualism
Each page exists in French (the default locale, at the site root) and in English (under
the /en/ prefix). The two versions are edited in parallel: EDI is a
discipline rooted in two traditions (European / EDIFACT, North American / X12), and a
monolingual coverage would be incomplete. Translation is done by the editorial team,
reviewed, and aligned term-by-term with the glossary.
Open knowledge
The phrase open knowledge is not marketing. The editorial content of ediverse — the explanations, the diagrams, the original didactic examples — is published under an open licence permitting reuse with attribution. Cited primary sources keep their original licence, indicated page by page when the licence requires it. No site feature is gated behind sign-up or payment.