# About _my_ Van

_my_ GLN is a suite of Electronic Business Interaction services based on Internet technology. It provides a migration path from the traditional mailbox-based VAN services to a Web Service based event-driven business interaction. Subscription to the _my_ GLN services platform guides you on a migration path from EDI to XML.

## Features

- **Responsive** The _my_ GLN architecture is based on web server technology. Many years of research and development in this area has made web server technology a stable and highly scalable foundation for a business interaction environment. By reducing the number of intermediate queues, _my_ GLN reduces the overhead of intermediate context save operations and latency.

By using the integration capabilities of the Microsoft .NET architecture combined with standard components such as Microsoft IIS6 and XSLT Descartes offers an extensible and modular infrastructure that will allow you to do more with your electronic business documents.

- **Secure** Use of SSL and PKI in combination with the HTTP protocol provides a secure alternative to the FTP protocol. Protocols like EDIINT-AS2 and ebMS reduce the complexity of firewall configurations and provide non-repudiation and protection of your business data. For participants that do not want to use advanced protocols like AS2 or ebMS, the Simple HTTPs Upload can provide you with the advantages of encryption and mutual authentication without investment or complexity.

- **Multi-translator** The _my_ GLN environment encapsulates multiple document transformation engines. This enables the reuse of existing mapping specifications and reduces the time and cost of migration to the _my_ GLN environment.

- **Self-service** By using web applications, most of your trading partners will be able to connect to your trading partner community themselves. Each participant can test their scenario at their own pace and will not have to wait on service desks or implementation consultants. By reporting syntax and content errors as part of the response to the actual submission of the message, the implementation cycle is reduced considerably, resulting in quick and cost-effective connectivity. With a hyperlinked diagnostic report, analysis is available to both your development and IT department.

All documents submitted to _my_ GLN are assigned a unique document tracking number (a.k.a. tid) that you use to track documents as they are being processed and delivered.

- **Unicode** _my_ GLN uses the Unicode alphabet to store and process your documents. As the universal alphabet, the Unicode alphabet contains virtually all possible characters.

- **XML bridge** _my_ GLN aims to support all common EDI syntaxes. In this way EDI can easily converted into XML-based business documents. Bridging an existing document flow into enterprise applications such as the Descartes LNOS suite is one of the prime objectives of _my_ GLN.

If you like to know more about the limited release program for _my_ GLN, please contact [Douwe Tolsma](mailto:DTolsma@descartes.com?subject=About%20myGLN) at the [Descartes Systems Group](/content/site-root.html).