Defense Logistics Agency logo and hyperlink

Transaction Formats


The DLA Logistics Management Standards Office maintains several formats of logistics electronic data interchange transactions. Forms for submitting transactions are also supported. The formats/forms currently maintained are listed below; all formats listed are available on the same web page:

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12
These are the national standards that are the basis for DoD Transactions.  DLMS Supplements to Federal ICs (along with the DLMS manual) constitute DoD's trading partner agreement for use of the Federal ICs within the DoD logistics process.  DLMS Supplements mirror the approved Federal ICs and include:  Federal IC notes; DLMS notes (detailed business rules, often specifying conditions of use for optional data); and transition guidance governing operation in a mixed DLSS/DLMS environment.

A search capability is also available for: Logistics Qualifiers, DLMS to DLSS Cross Reference, and Conversion Guides used in DLMS (DoD logistics) Supplements to Federal ICs.

.sef Formatted Files of Defense Logistics Management Standards (DLMS) supplements.
The Standard Exchange Format (SEF) is an open-standard, computer readable, text format that contains the schematic information of an EDI document. Basically, the purpose of a SEF file is to convey an EDI implementation guideline in a standard, computer-parsable format so that it can be read directly by EDI applications. These are the basic files used to produce the DLMS supplements. They are co-located with the DLMS supplements.

Extensible Markup Language (XML)
The DLA Logistics Management Standards Office has developed XML schemas for use in DoD logistics that represent Defense Logistics Management Standards (DLMS) Supplements to Federal Implementation Conventions (ICs) for ANSI ASC X12 based EDI transactions. XML offers a flexible way to describe and tag content (data, word, phase, etc.) in a structured way. The goal of the XML standard emphasized simplicity and usability over the Internet. It is a textual data format with worldwide support. Though originally designed to focus on documents, it is widely used to represent data structures (e.g., DLMS) and is the foundation of web services.
.xsd Formatted Files of DLMS Supplements.
XML only refers to the data, the XML Schema (i.e. XSD file) is used to express the set of business rules to which the XML must conform in order to be considered valid. The schema is an abstract collection of metadata components. The XML is validated against the schema (a process known as the assessment) prior to sending the transaction for processing. This validation ensures required fields are present, the elements are in the correct format and valid codes are used (when defined in the schema). They are co-located with the .pdf versions of the DLMS Supplement.


Military Standard Logistics System (MILS)/Defense Logistics Standard Systems (DLSS)
These are the electronic data interchange standard transactions that have been in use by DoD for over 40 years.

Visibility Transactions:
Three passive RFID transactions are available, per ADC 219. The schemas (XSD) files can be found on the supplements page.
IUID Transactions:
The linked document below contains DLMS Supplements that will be affected by the implementation of Item Unique Identifier (IUID) along with Approved DLMS Changes (ADC). This list was intended to serve as a placeholder for considering the use of IUID in DLMS transactions. ADC numbers only are provided while business rules for the use of IUID have yet to be determined. Many of the DLMS transactions support IUID. A document containing all DLMS Supplements (DS) with Item Unique Identification (IUID) Capability is located at DLMS_UIIstatus_with_ADCs.doc.