Nlets offers a service that will search through historical transactions. It is known as our Random Access to Nlets Data (RAND) process, and has proven very useful to many users to research previous transactions. Users conduct the search by using Nlets’ NLQ/NLR and NFQ/NFR message keys. 
 

During the 2021 Spring Technical Operations Committee (TOC) meeting, Nlets staff was asked to provide the feasibility of updating the current RAND process to include human readable results.  As we progressed through our research and analysis, it became clear that not only was it feasible, it was very doable.   
 

The Application Services team created the architecture and supporting requirements to achieve this goal, and it is now available to users.  While we were at it, we also made a few other changes that should make RAND easier to use!   
 

In simple terms, we have been able to provide the search results without any of the ugly, hard to read XML that makes it difficult to discern what the message actually says! 
 

Here are some of the key changes: 

• When returning the initial list (NLQ/NLR) of results: 

• The sequence number has been reduced to a maximum of 10 characters 

• The sample message will contain up to the first 80 characters of the result without the Nlets header and completely in human readable text 

Results from the detailed response (NFQ/NFR): 

• Will be presented in human readable text 

• Any XML formatting will be removed, and fields identified 

• The original XML message can be retrieved by adding an “X” to the end of the sequence number when submitting the NFQ message to Nlets 

We are very excited to move forward with this change with the hope that more users will find the RAND process useful.  For more information and examples of the updates to the RAND process, please see our wiki page, or contact the Nlets Service Center.