PUSH vs. PULL EDI Transmissions: Pros And Cons
EDI Transmissions method PULL vs. PUSH should be carefully taken into consideration for protocol design. The decision will have implications on security and usability.
PULL: The pull method is when an organization decides for example to initiate an FTP connection to the trading partner’s server or a VAN to download the transaction and process it.
- PULL Method PROS:
- The organization doing the pull does not have to host and maintain a server with user-names and passwords.
- The receiver chooses when to receive the data and uses that as a solution for scheduling constraints.
- Start up costs are inexpensive an FTP/SFTP client software is usually enough to get going.
- PULL Method CONS:
- Jobs have to be scheduled to pull the transactions and the transaction availability time is unpredictable therefore forcing the receiving trading partner to set up schedules. For example, the file may be available to download anytime from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM and the receiving party decides to run the job that pulls the data every hour on the hour. That would be 8 scheduled jobs that have to be monitored, tracked and audited.
- This creates unnecessary traffic for the host.
- The hosting party is burdened with having to worry about storing the files until they are pulled.
PUSH: The push method is when an organization decides for example to initiate an FTP connection to the trading partner’s server or the VAN and push the data instead of pulling it. The most successful method of implementing this is when both trading partners use the PUSH-PUSH method.
- PUSH Method PROS:
- On the receiving side the trading partner does not need to worry about scheduling a job that logs on to the host server and pulls the data. The data is pushed by the sending party and the arrival of the data triggers the translation job to start.
- On the sending side the trading partner does not have to worry about waiting for the receiver to retrieve the data before archiving the file. After the push has been completed the sending trading partner simply archives the file.
- There is no unnecessary traffic. The files are pushed only when the data becomes available.
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PUSH Method CONS:
- Start-up costs are more expense to host and maintain a server.
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Sometimes the data will arrive at an un-wanted time when the receiver is not ready for it. However this can usually be remedied by using a dependency constraint in the scheduler tool.
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