The basic standardization concept of EDIFACT is that there are uniform message types called United Nations Standard Message. The message types have exactly one nickname consisting of six uppercase English alphabets. The message begins with UNH and with UNT.

(i) United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT) is an international EDI - standard developed under the supervision of the United Nations.
(ii) In 1987, the UN / EDIFACT syntax rules were approved as ISO: ISO9735 standard by the International Organization for Standardization.
(iii) EDIFACT includes a set of internationally agreed standards, catalogs and guidelines for electronic exchange of structured data between independent computer systems.
(iv) It is a cross-industry, standard data format of electronic data for commercial transactions.
(v) Maintenance and further development of this standard goes through the United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), which is affiliated to the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

Electronic data interchange architecture specifies four different layers namely
(i) Semantic layer
(ii) Standards translation layer
(iii) Transport layer
(iv) Physical layer

The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the exchange of business documents between one trade partner and another electronically. It is used to transfer documents such as delivery notes, invoices, purchase orders, advance ship notice, functional acknowledgements etc. These documents are transferred directly from the computer of the issuing company to that of the receiving company, with great time saving and avoiding many errors of traditional on paper communications.