SWIM (SoftWare for Intelligent Messaging) provides electronic data interchange (EDI). It sends and receives messages in standard formats such as the United Nations' EDIFACT, ANSI X.12, XML and proprietary formats. SWIM translates the received messages and encapsulates the message information into an object, and passes it to an EDI interface module. The EDI interface module performs the application-specific validations and hands over of the data to the actual application.

Features
Repository: SWIM has a pre-defined 'repository' of standard EDIFACT and NIC messages of various industry practices / domains (standard ANSI X12 messages will soon be added). It can only understand the messages present in the repository; and can send and receive them. But the customer can add new messages to the repository as and when required.

Communication mode
The SWIM engine can receive messages from / send messages to:

	The file system: A directory on the file system of the machine, where the engine is running
	Email: As an email attachment or as an in-line body text of an email message
	FTP: From and to a remote machine by a remote log-in to another machine

Schedules
The administrator of the engine can set up the periodicity in which the engine should check for input messages.

The different types of schedules supported:

	Relative periodic schedule: Every 10 seconds / minutes / hours
	Absolute periodic schedule: At 10:00 pm (everyday or any weekday)
	Calendar schedule: On 31/12/2002, 11:59 pm, etc.

Message conversion
Whenever SWIM receives a message from the repository, it knows how to validate the message. It performs validations such as whether the sender is a valid partner or not, whether the sender can send this particular message or not, whether the message is well formed (adhering to rules defined by the format of the message), etc. Once the message is validated, the data is extracted and encapsulated into an object, and the object is given to the application program written to process / handle the data.

Translations
SWIM uses various 'translation programs' written to carry out the conversion of an input file from one format (say, an in-house text format) to another format (say, EDIFACT). But in order to have these 'translation programs' as a part of the repository, both the input format and the output file formats must be known in advance.

Scalability
A SWIM process will be created to process a message. Additional processes will be created if there are a number of messages to be handled. The number of processes created at any point of time will be equivalent to the number of messages being processed. This concurrent processing of messages will enable a very high throughput from the system. All the processes can be controlled from the 'process administration' screen.

Error correction
If there is any problem in processing or validating the message, it is rejected. The administrator of SWIM can, later, with the help of a user-friendly GUI error correction tool, correct the errors in the message if required. Once the errors are corrected, the message will be processed automatically.

Message archive
The administrator of SWIM can set up an archival policy for data / configuration files, error files, incoming files, outgoing files, etc. The policy can be set either for a particular partner or all partners.

Logging
SWIM has an excellent logging facility. The log files are generated on a per-day basis. The logs can be used to find out what was / is going on in the SWIM system at any point of time. This is very useful, since most of the processing takes place in the background.

Database and platform-independent
SWIM is a database-independent system. It can run on any database. It is also platform-independent. It can run on any flavour of Unix or Windows.

General purpose tasks
SWIM can not only send and receive messages. It can also schedule and run other — non-EDI — general purpose tasks on a periodic basis. The SWIM administrator can configure such tasks.

Technical architecture, hardware and software platforms

	Hardware installed: Pentium 4 processor with at least 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hard disk
	Operating system: Unix, Linux or Windows NT / 2000 RDBMS Oracle 8.1.7
	Application software: SWING
	Programming languages: J2SDK 1.4.0, Perl 5.0.6
	Security features: Message authentication and data encryption

Strengths

	Aids in decision making
	Data error reduction
	Enhances customer service
	Value-added services
	Highly secured system
	Ease of use
	Improves operations control
	Improves personnel productivity and manpower utilisation
	Streamlines operational processes

Experience
CMC developed the SWIM software based on its extensive experience in implementing state-of-the-art container and cargo EDI messages. As part of its CALM software implementation, CMC implemented an NIC messages-based SWIM application at Adani Port, India.

Benefits

	Automatic retrieval, authentication and validation of EDI messages
	Automatic processing, conversion and translation of EDI messages
	Automatic acknowledgement, logging and archiving
	Manual mistakes and re-keying of data eliminated
	Online error correction facility
	Though automatic, control remains with the user

Contact
Head - Shipping
CMC Centre
Old Mumbai Highway Road
Gachibowli
Hyderabad - 500 019
Tel: 91-40 - 23000401/501
Fax: 91-40 - 23000509
Email: shipping@cmcltd.com