Defining electronic data interchange transactions with UML

The application-to-application exchange of business data, known as electronic data interchange (EDI), has not fulfilled the expected potential. The focus for the development of EDI standards should be shifted from the interchange file to the information contained within the business process. The use of object oriented techniques to model the semantics of business data permits the differentiation from IT specific requirements. We present the OO-edi approach. OO-edi is based on UML and the Rational Unified Process (RUP). Nevertheless, RUP is only a framework and guidelines on how to exactly apply modeling must be specified. The presented customization of RUP is called UMM (UN/CEFACT´s modeling methodology).