A generic Internet based system for viewing supply chain data is provided. The system includes an Internet based data viewing engine and a data store that holds both viewable data and metadata associated with the viewable data. The metadata can be employed by the Internet based data viewing engine to control the presentation of the viewable data. The generic Internet based supply chain data viewing engine may be employed in a virtual private supply chain (VPSC). A VPSC includes a data acceptor that can receive supply chain data items from supply chain members, a supply chain data store that can store transformed, validated supply chain data items received from the supply chain members and a data accessor operable to selectively present supply chain data items stored in the supply chain data store to viewing supply chain members. One example of the data accessor is the generic Internet based viewing engine.