Transaction Capabilities Application Part (TCAP) enables the deployment of intelligent network services by supporting non-circuit related information exchange between signaling points using SCCP connectionless services. TCAP messages are contained within the SCCP portion of the MSU. The TCAP layer includes both the Transaction Portion and the Component Portion.
 
The transaction portion deals primarily with managing transactions that are exchanged between the signaling points. The various types of transaction messages supported in ANSI TCAP are Unidirectional, Query with Permission, Query without Permission, Response, Conversation with Permission, Conversation without permission and Abort.
 
The component portion of the TCAP layer contains components that include application specific information. The types of components supported in ANSI TCAP are Invoke (Last), Invoke (Not Last), Return Result (Last), Return Result (Not Last), Return Error, Reject and Cancel.
 
IntelliNet’s TCAP provides a comprehensive implementation of the TCAP layer as defined in BellCore Specification GR-246 (ANSI T1.114). The IntelliNet TCAP layer utilizes the services provided by the IntelliNet SCCP layer to send and receive messages. It also provides a C++ application-programming interface for application programmers to utilize the services provided by the IntelliNet TCAP layer.
 
IntelliNet provides a generic TCAP interface, which enables application network processes to encode and send messages to the TCAP layer and to receive and decode a message from the TCAP layer.  The TCAP API is used to send applications to an SS7 stack and to receive messages from that stack.  IntelliNet offers a support over TCP/IP stack (used in E5 Interfaces) and Telcordia GDI support as well.