The EDI-PRESS system

EDI-PRESS is an electronic data exchange system that supports comprehensively the communication between publishers, national distribution companies, station booksellers and press wholesalers. With the help of standardized information structures the data dispatch as well as the additional and extension data processing of the field distribution control, accounting and logistic are formed as efficiently and economically as possible.

Due to the EDI-PRESS unnecessary communication problems between publishers and their trading partners can be avoided.

In 1992 the associations of the railway station booksellers and wholesale traders asked the VDZ and ISPC to support the marketing and dispatch data exchanges extensively with electronic methods beyond the present ISPC-IBM procedure. In KVM (coordinated distribution marketing) the demand for this was taken up and stipulated.

The ISPC advisory board with the representatives of the press wholesalers and the publishers, the VDZ project group of marketing engineering and an ISPC project group "EDI" had generally thought about:

                                   * marketing-related contents
                                   * technical and administrative demands as well as
                                   * definition/structures of information interfaces.

On this basis EDI-PRESS has been developed by ISPC GmbH & Co. as a modern and up to date technical communication platform.

The EDI-PRESS system consists of two essential elements:

On the one hand, there is the standardization and definition of the most important information structures of the trade - the formats/data record -, in order to create a homogeneous communication basis.

On the other hand, there is a physical EDI-platform, the EDI-PRESS mailbox center that handles and supports data exchange into all directions.

Defined and standardized formats/data records

EDI-PRESS defines standard formats and free formats.

Standard formats describe communication contents which are used by all partners of the system. The communication contents are permanently defined and agreed.

For free formats EDI-PRESS only initializes the formal construction of addressing with default values. The subsequent contents can be agreed bilaterally between the customers.

Every format / data record contains two components. The ID part is used to "address" a message, comparable with the function of an envelope. The actual contents are deposited in the Data part.

Allocation- and transmission processing

* direct addressing:
   Every data record to be sent is mapped to a tangible partner. The clearing
   center leads the   data record directly into the mailbox of the addressee.

Information interfaces have been defined for the following contents:

A. Data bus publishers/distribution companies to wholesalers:

            * standard EVT calendar (first date of sale)
            * publisher invoices
            * dispatch and amount parameter
            * object master data
            * disposition
            * free formats

 B. Data bus wholesalers to publishers/distribution companies:

            * disposition
            * remission
            * EHASTRA-Data
            * free formats
            * current ISPC interface information

                        - regulation data
                        - data of the flow of the press products
                        - sales data

EDI-PRESS mailbox clearing procedure

The clearing service is provided by the computer center of the company EMS in Karlsruhe. There are an entry mailbox and an exit mailbox available to every participant. Connection to the EDI-PRESS-SYSTEM will be provided by the software "EDI-PRESS-SERVER-2007" delivered by the ISPC. Internet is used as communication link.

The EDI-PRESS-SERVER includes the following functions:

* EDI-PRESS-SERVER sends data to and receives data from the clearing center. The link connection, the data transfer and the link disconnection are carried out automatically by the EDI-PRESS-SERVER

* Files to be sent are split according to the receiving mailbox, converted into an EDI-PRESS-format and compressed. Files received get decompressed and converted into the EDI-PRESS-SERVER format.

* The EDI-PRESS-SERVER records all data transfer which is carried out.

* The EDI-PRESS-SERVER is filing the data received and clearing the archive according to configurable rules.

* The EDI-PRESS-SERVER can be operated by a Windows surface but also provides a timer for unattended transfer.

The EDI-PRESS-SERVER runs on PC systems under Windows (e.g. Windows XP and higher).