A Comparison Study for Optimal Implementation of the EDI Systems of Port Logistics

항만물류 EDI 시스템의 최적 구현을 위한 비교 분석

At present, the EDI systems are indispensable software in port logistics industry. Currently, a monopolistic VAN/EDI service provider operates the EDI services. The current EDI client software has the 2-tier fat client/server architecture. However, the current EDI software is lack of Web interface and causes lots of cost for maintenance. Therefore, a variety of implementation architecture has been being tried by using script, XML and distributed object-oriented technology. Web/EDI and XML/EDI are the new EDI systems, However, the EDI systems have some limitations such as speed. This study intends to compare the variety implementation architecture for the EDI systems in the users' perspective and explore the strong and weak points of each architecture. We compared the EDI systems based on our experience of more than 2-years of implementation project for the EDI systems of port logistics. We categorized the EDI systems as client application EDI, Web EDI using script, XML/EDI, and 3-tier distributed object-oriented EDI system. We compared them with criteria such as speed, program maintenance, easiness of implementation and usage, security, and load balancing and fail-over. Finally we discuss the direction of optimal EDI system architecture for the future.