On Feb 8, 3:36 pm, TroyK <cs_tr... (AT) juno (DOT) com> wrote:
Relax. It's nothing to worry about.

Suppose you're Wal*Mart. You have an internal inventory management
system. Each product you sell has an SKU of some kind.

But you also have a metric crap-ton of suppliers. Each of them has
their own internal inventory or production management system. Each of
them has an SKU of some kind for the products they sell.

How is Wal*Mart to "know" that when an ACME Shoes invoice says
"PartId: 1234, PartName: Shoes, black, size 17" it needs to tell its
accounts payable system about a "SKU: 4321. Product: Footwear. Black
Color. Size 17 Adult"? The answer is you have an application residing
somewhere -- think of it as a kind of web site a computer can look up
-- that other systems get to ask and get back "authoritative" answers
to this kind of question. Wal*Mart probably has a lot of systems that
want answers to these kinds of question (What's our Vendor Code for
"ACME Shoes"?, etc).

It's not a theory thing. Or a new kind of tool. There's nothing
particularly technically profound. It's just an application written in
response to an emerging need.

On Feb 8, 3:36 pm, TroyK <cs_tr... (AT) juno (DOT) com> wrote:
Relax. It's nothing to worry about.

Suppose you're Wal*Mart. You have an internal inventory management
system. Each product you sell has an SKU of some kind.

But you also have a metric crap-ton of suppliers. Each of them has
their own internal inventory or production management system. Each of
them has an SKU of some kind for the products they sell.

How is Wal*Mart to "know" that when an ACME Shoes invoice says
"PartId: 1234, PartName: Shoes, black, size 17" it needs to tell its
accounts payable system about a "SKU: 4321. Product: Footwear. Black
Color. Size 17 Adult"? The answer is you have an application residing
somewhere -- think of it as a kind of web site a computer can look up
-- that other systems get to ask and get back "authoritative" answers
to this kind of question. Wal*Mart probably has a lot of systems that
want answers to these kinds of question (What's our Vendor Code for
"ACME Shoes"?, etc).

It's not a theory thing. Or a new kind of tool. There's nothing
particularly technically profound. It's just an application written in
response to an emerging need.

On Feb 8, 3:36 pm, TroyK <cs_tr... (AT) juno (DOT) com> wrote:
Relax. It's nothing to worry about.

Suppose you're Wal*Mart. You have an internal inventory management
system. Each product you sell has an SKU of some kind.

But you also have a metric crap-ton of suppliers. Each of them has
their own internal inventory or production management system. Each of
them has an SKU of some kind for the products they sell.

How is Wal*Mart to "know" that when an ACME Shoes invoice says
"PartId: 1234, PartName: Shoes, black, size 17" it needs to tell its
accounts payable system about a "SKU: 4321. Product: Footwear. Black
Color. Size 17 Adult"? The answer is you have an application residing
somewhere -- think of it as a kind of web site a computer can look up
-- that other systems get to ask and get back "authoritative" answers
to this kind of question. Wal*Mart probably has a lot of systems that
want answers to these kinds of question (What's our Vendor Code for
"ACME Shoes"?, etc).

It's not a theory thing. Or a new kind of tool. There's nothing
particularly technically profound. It's just an application written in
response to an emerging need.

On Feb 8, 3:36 pm, TroyK <cs_tr... (AT) juno (DOT) com> wrote:
Relax. It's nothing to worry about.

Suppose you're Wal*Mart. You have an internal inventory management
system. Each product you sell has an SKU of some kind.

But you also have a metric crap-ton of suppliers. Each of them has
their own internal inventory or production management system. Each of
them has an SKU of some kind for the products they sell.

How is Wal*Mart to "know" that when an ACME Shoes invoice says
"PartId: 1234, PartName: Shoes, black, size 17" it needs to tell its
accounts payable system about a "SKU: 4321. Product: Footwear. Black
Color. Size 17 Adult"? The answer is you have an application residing
somewhere -- think of it as a kind of web site a computer can look up
-- that other systems get to ask and get back "authoritative" answers
to this kind of question. Wal*Mart probably has a lot of systems that
want answers to these kinds of question (What's our Vendor Code for
"ACME Shoes"?, etc).

It's not a theory thing. Or a new kind of tool. There's nothing
particularly technically profound. It's just an application written in
response to an emerging need.

On Feb 8, 3:36 pm, TroyK <cs_tr... (AT) juno (DOT) com> wrote:
Relax. It's nothing to worry about.

Suppose you're Wal*Mart. You have an internal inventory management
system. Each product you sell has an SKU of some kind.

But you also have a metric crap-ton of suppliers. Each of them has
their own internal inventory or production management system. Each of
them has an SKU of some kind for the products they sell.

How is Wal*Mart to "know" that when an ACME Shoes invoice says
"PartId: 1234, PartName: Shoes, black, size 17" it needs to tell its
accounts payable system about a "SKU: 4321. Product: Footwear. Black
Color. Size 17 Adult"? The answer is you have an application residing
somewhere -- think of it as a kind of web site a computer can look up
-- that other systems get to ask and get back "authoritative" answers
to this kind of question. Wal*Mart probably has a lot of systems that
want answers to these kinds of question (What's our Vendor Code for
"ACME Shoes"?, etc).

It's not a theory thing. Or a new kind of tool. There's nothing
particularly technically profound. It's just an application written in
response to an emerging need.