SWIM (Soft Ware 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, encapsulates the information into an object, and passes it to an EDI interface module. The EDI interface module performs the application-specific validations and hands over data to the respective application – MACH, CALM, WARM.

Features
Repository: SWIM has a pre-defined 'repository' of standard EDIFACT, NIC, X12 and XML messages of shipping practices/domains. It supports messages present in the repository and sends and receives them.

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

	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 Http/s: XML embedded in SOAP to a remote machine over http/https

Schedules
Automated message checking: The administrator of the engine can set up the periodicity with 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: For example : On 31/12/2007, 11:59 pm,

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 this particular message can be sent 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.

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, the message is rejected. A user-friendly GUI tool facilitates correction of 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.

Platform-independence
SWIM is platform-independent and runs on any Unix/Windows operating system.

General purpose tasks
Besides sending and receiving 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 Technologies

Operating Systems	Solaris, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Windows 2003 / XP
Hardware Systems	IBM , HP, Sun SPARC, Dell
DBMS	Oracle
Application Software/Frond End	Java Swing
Programming Languages	J2SDK 1.5.0, Perl 5.0.6
Security Features	Message authentication and data encryption

Unique Benefits

	Aids in decision making
	Data error reduction
	Enhances customer service
	Value-added services
	Highly secure system
	Easy to use
	Improves operations control
	Increases 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 MACH, CALM software implementations:

	CMC implemented an NIC messages-based SWIM application at Adani Port, India,
	Inhouse, XML, EDIFACT and X12 messages-based SWIM application at ForthPorts (Community System),
	WWL (Shipping Line/Booking System), Penang Port and Port of Lirquen.

CMC implemented web-service interface with MCA (Maritime Coastguard Agency) CERS (Consolidated European Union Reporting System) at Forth Ports.