OTA is a framework for EFT-POS terminals designed sometime ago by interPay. OTA provides both a C and a Forth-like API and is not intended to use OCF nor PC/SC which generally are not available on the EFT-POS devices. More generally, if OCF provides a generic Java API for smart card access on workstation and, in a near future, on small smartcard-enabled and Java-enabled devices, there exists other industry specific frameworks that do not use the same approach to provide a smart card access than OCF or PC/SC. Besides OTA, the most different approach can be found with J/XFS (www.jxfs.com). J/XFS is a very interesting framework that provides, among other APIs, a very simple and quite original API for smart card readers. In the way initiated by J/XFS, STIP (www.stipgroup.org) is a new attempt to provide a Java framework for small EFT-POS terminals. STIP will provide an API for smart card access that will be very similar to the J/XFS one. A white paper about STIP will be available in December. Another framework for financial application is OPTF from Visa. OPTF is a high level abstract framework that can be implemented on top of STIP or alternatively can use PC/SC or OCF. OCF is a very complete and sophisticated generic framework dedicated exclusively to smart card access and card services. For industry specific purpose where, like in the financial industry, the notion of card service is not very useful, and where platforms are dedicated to a specific purpose, it may be necessary to define frameworks intended to integrate many kinds of platform services, among which smart card reader service can be treated in a much more elementary way than it is done in OCF. This is why OTA, J/XFS, STIP, are not related to OCF. But if you intend to use smart cards on a workstation or even on an embedded device to provide some kind of generic service, like secure file service, crypto service, etc, OCF is presently the good and unique standard choice available with Java. Jean-Paul Billon Chairman STIP workgroup Director, Software Architecture Bull Smart cards and Terminals, Foster City, CA Kyusoon LEE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 10/16/99 11:58:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: (bcc: Jean-Paul Billon/US/BULL) Subject: [OCF] OTA vs. OCF I am confused between open terminal architecture(OTA) and open card frame(OCF). what's the differences? anybody can tell me? -- LEE, Kyusoon --- > Visit the OpenCard web site at http://www.opencard.org/ for more > information on OpenCard---binaries, source code, documents. > This list is being archived at http://www.opencard.org/archive/opencard/ --- > Visit the OpenCard web site at http://www.opencard.org/ for more > information on OpenCard---binaries, source code, documents. > This list is being archived at http://www.opencard.org/archive/opencard/
