Implementing the DCSA Booking Standard

This is a guide to implementing the DCSA Booking (BKG) standard version 2.0.0, written for the technical teams of DCSA adopting organizations.

Reference Documentation

To get acquainted with the standard, refer to the introductory Booking standard page.To understand the key concepts, user stories, use cases and data overview of the standard, refer to the Booking documentation page.For an overview of the business processes addressed by the standard, refer to the DCSA Industry Blueprint.To understand the data structures used by the standard and how they can be mapped to your own organization's data types, consult the Booking model in version 2024.Q4 of the DCSA Information Model.

Implementing the Standard

To get acquainted with the general principles applicable when implementing any DCSA standard, consult the DCSA API Design and Implementation Principles.To review the reference implementation of the Booking standard, created by DCSA to verify the standard and used for measuring the conformance of adopter implementations, consult the Booking module of the DCSA conformance GitHub repository.To ensure that your organization becomes a successful adopter in the DCSA Bill of Lading standard API ecosystem, use the DCSA conformance framework periodically throughout your implementation project, to measure the conformance of your implementation and to improve it as needed.You can use a DCSA conformance sandbox as a counterpart in your development, since it allows you to easily test the most relevant scenarios that your application needs to support.
Carrier Implementation
To implement the Booking standard API as a carrier, use your organization's technology stack to implement each of the "/v2/bookings" endpoints of the DCSA Booking OpenAPI specification page.Use the instructions in the Booking Conformance for Carriers page to verify that your application implements the DCSA standard in an interoperable way.
Shipper Implementation
To create and manage bookings through the DCSA Booking standard API implementation of any carrier, use your organization's technology stack to build a backend API client application using the DCSA Booking OpenAPI specification page.As an alternative, you can also use directly the corresponding API specification page of one of the carriers with which you need to create and manage bookings through the DCSA Booking standard API.To optionally receive notifications through the DCSA Booking API Notifications endpoint about bookings made by your organization with a carrier who offers notifications support, use your organization's technology stack to implement the "/v2/booking-notifications" endpoints of the DCSA Booking OpenAPI specification page and use the carrier's proprietary process to register your endpoint.