Every
year goods worth more than 5500 Bio USD are exchanged
in international markets. Paper trade documents are
still the essential tool to exchange information between
the involved trading partners, customs administrations
and financing institutions. The technological gap of
the advanced supply chain and logistics systems used
for the production and distribution of the goods and
the ancient system of exchanging the corresponding trade
data in form of paper documents becomes an increasing
obstacle for international trade. The United Nations
is convinced that electronic trade documents will make
a significant contribution to the efficiency and security
of international trade. The United Nations electronic
Trade Documents (UNeDocs, http://www.UNeDocs.org) is a project
of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
(UNECE) to provide the electronic equivalent for standard
trade documents used in international trade.
In order to meet the characteristic
of paper electronic trade documents must be ubiquitous,
that is the basic documentary functionality such as
to render the electronic document in a human readable
format or to convert the electronic document into a
valid trade document that meets the relevant international
documentary standards. The UNeDocs concept of Digital
Paper for Trade implements this approach. UNeDocs electronic
trade documents in XML format are the electronic equivalent
of of paper trade documents that are aligned to the
United Nations Layout Key (UNLK), a standard that is
world wide used to design forms for international (and
national) trade document forms. UNeDocs is fully compatible
with latest Internet technologies. The receiver of a
UNeDocs trade document has at any time the possibility
to convert the document into a Web document or into
a standard paper trade document. This functionality
is available to any trader with access to a standard
PC with Internet connection. For trading situations
were Internet connection is not available, UNeDocs provides
specific solutions which allow data processing without
network connection.
The
UNECE provides now Web Services for digital Paper in
the Internet for the United Nations electronic Trade Documents. Web
Services is a new Internet standard based on XML technologies.
Web Services provide access to services provided by
a specialised service provider via the Internet. The
service can be requested either directly by a human
user or within the execution of a software program.
With UNeDocs Web Services for electronic Trade Documents
demonstrate the ubiquity and Internet integration of
UNeDocs trade documents and value added services and
technologies that can be implemented with electronic
trade documents. The Web Service is free of charge and
allows the receiver of a UNeDocs trade document to:
- Converts the electronic (XML)
document into a PDF trade document: XMLtoPaper
- Convert the electronic (XML) document
into a Web document: XMLtoHTML
- Translate the document: FormTranslate
- Instant delivery of the electronic
document: InstantDelivery.
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