Hello,
Janet LF HEUNG wrote:
>
> Hi Christophe,
>
> Thank you for your information. I am also a beginner of smart card,
> and I have browsed the web site you have recommended. However, I
> have some questions:
>
I'll try to do my best. Other knowledgeable people on the list
are welcome to fill the gaps :-).
> 1. Do I need to write my own program code in order to load a applet
> onto a Java Card? Or I just use the utility come with development
> kit?
I think all sold development kits include utilities to allow you
to install an applet on the card! So you don't have to write any
code for that. (In any case, I'm positive about this for GemXpresso
RAD 211! :-).
Also what has changed is that in the past years, this process was
not standardized and so development kits were including tools that
were all proprietary, which is not much of a problem when testing
JavaCards (I'm talking about the 1.0 / 2.0 time) but starts to be
one when using several vendors cards and the ability to upgrade a
card after issuing time.
Now, JavaCard 2.1 still does not standardize managemement APIs
but I think VOP (Visa Open Platform, now called Global Platform
probably) is becoming the de-facto standard for applet management
on JavaCards and vendors will sooner or latter all conform to the
VOP APIs, so they will include "standard" utilities in their
development kits.
In OCF, we have included in 1.2 very high-level yet non-powerful APIs
in order to be able to develop interoperable CMS-type of software (for
Card Applet Management) were you will have all the necessary plugins
for JavaCard, Multo, WfSC. Sylvain Ferey ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote an
excellent article, http://www.opencard.org/archive/opencard/1078.html
in the list explaining the purpose and principles of the API.
There is a possibility, however, to add more complex, powerful, and
versatile APIs for either VOP and/or Multos management. I tried to
trigger interest once or twice but for the time being it didn't ;-).
However, I think it would be a very good thing to have not only a VOP
API but also some kind of Basic VOP Manager CardService that could be
used with all JavaCard2.1+VOP cards.
> 2. It seems to me that on MULTOS platform, the card management issue
> is well taken care of. Whereas in Java Card Platform, the developer
> has to write program code to handle the various card management
> issues, such as add/delete of applets onto a smart card, load/unload
> applet or even card authentication. Is this true?
>
No I think in all three cases of open smart cards, applet management
is all well taken care of. Not that there might be systems that are
better than the others (security, performance, simplicity, etc.),
I won't go into that discussion because frankly I don't even know! ;-).
The only difference for JavaCards is that applet management is *not*
(or maybe not yet) part of the standard, and so if you want to compare
the specifications, you should compare Multos vs JC+VOP. But it's not
because there are no specs for this in the JavaCard docs that there
is no code in the development kits, of course there is. And I'm sure
the card vendors have ensured it is good (at least from a security
point of view).
See http://www.visa.com/nt/suppliers/open/main.html for more
details on OP/VOP.
> 3. To load a applet to a Java Card, do I need to apply for a RID
> from some recognised body?
>
I'll leave this to other people. My understanding is that you don't
have for sure when you are developing, you can just specify any ID,
but you will have when deploying. Although, there might be cases
where it's not even necessary.. I don't know.
Hope it helped.
Cheers,
Christophe.
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= and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in =
= case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle =
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