St. Louis April 18, 2001 Supply chain and electronic message management company Transentric yesterday released eight TranXML schemas to support an open standard for Internet-enabled applications including load tendering, delivery, freight billing, reconciliation, scheduling/forecasting and equipment ordering.
Developed as an open standard, TranXML is designed to be supplier-neutral and licenses will be available free of charge. Industry participants can use TranXML for various trading partner relationships, including point-to-point, application service provider (ASP) models or e-marketplaces.
Benefits of TranXML will include a method of implementing new trading partner relationships. TranXML will enable new trading relationships for users of traditional electronic data interchange (EDI). In addition, ASP companies will be able to provide interoperability between TranXML and traditional EDI, and corporations without EDI infrastructure will be able to form new trading partner communities using TranXML.
"The largest obstacle to seamless data exchange has always been the lack of a common language supporting the flow of data to and from different applications TranXML now allows this data to have a common language," said Fred Domke, chief technology officer of Transentric. "It further defines Transentric's vision to help alleviate barriers within the supply chain and dramatically increase the use of e-commerce as it relates to transportation and logistics services."
TranXML will allow a neutral format that enables both carrier and shipper legacy systems to exchange data. In addition, the intelligent message management services provided by Transentric's Gateway will be able to convert messages in XML, X12, EDIFACT or custom flat files using common domain business objects. Transentric will then be able to provide data in any format required by the trading partner's enterprise resource planning (ERP) or legacy system for logistics applications.
Transentric has authored a white paper on TranXML, which is currently available on its Web site at along with royalty-free downloadable versions of the TranXML schemas.