Summer 2021 is almost over and the work on SwissDecTX Transmitter 5.0 – compliant with the Swissdec 5.0 ELM directives – is making good progress.
First, we want to restate the existing SwissDecTX Transmitter 4.0 is (and always was) fully compatible with the latest Swissdec security requirements, notably TLS 1.2, but that Windows requires some registry tweaks to enable this support which is off by default, see our article on the subject.
The SwissDecTX Transmitter 5.0 builds on that solid foundation and will incorporate the registry changes necessary to configure Windows and the .NET Framework to use the proper ciphers and signature algorithms automatically upon installation.
As of this writing, the SwissDecTX 5.0 project reached two important milestones:
- The transmitter code base, rooted in version 4.0 from 2014, has been updated to use the latest tools. The transmitter is a mix of C#, C++ and XSLT and we made sure the code builds cleanly on the latest toolsets, jumping from 2013 to 2019 tool versions. We should be able to maintain the existing system requirements, except the minimum Windows version will be Windows 7 SP1 due to the TLS 1.2 requirement (this also applies to the existing transmitter.)
- We successfully integrated the final Swissdec 5.0 schemas and adapted the transmitter code to match the 5.0 Swissdec web service. As its stands, we can Ping the server 5.0 and verify inter-operability, signatures, encryption/decryption as well as the cryptographic validation of the replies. This step is important as is validates the technical foundation.
We also updated our unit-tests to match the new 5.0 service. We use unit-testing extensively to catch regressions and ensure high quality along the entire development process. We hope we’ll be able to perform the first 5.0 declaration transmission in the next few days, which will mark another important milestone.
We will then proceed with the support of the features that are new to Swissdec 5.0, notable the monthly declarations and the dialog interactions, after which a pre-beta version of the transmitter 5 will be made available on this site.
Stay tuned!
