Hi Tom,

You wrote:

>So, if I understand you correctly, you want to be able to use Smartcards
>without knowing anything about them?  Good luck!

Actually, I think knowledge of low level protocols and APDUs and such is not
necessary to be able to program a smartcard. The previous Gemplus card and RAD
kit were a case in point: they offered something called DMI, or Direct Method
Invocation. You simply wrote classes and methods for both client and card, and
let the RAD kit generate code to glue the two together. In your client code,
you could act as if methods of classes or instances on the card could be
invoked directly. The smartcard in this architecture can be viewed as a
server, the way in which it is used may be compared to how things are handled
in CORBA and RMI (Java Remote Method Invocation).

Letting the grudge work being done by smart middleware or development software
is already commonplace in ordinary (non-smartcard) software engineering. When
you jump into smartcard developmment after having used modern tools before, it
feels like a big step back. The previous Gemplus RAD kit is the only exception
I have spotted so far.

>> 4) Be happy with my ignorance of APDUs

Exactly ! That is why I am a bit disappointed by the absence of (even any
mention of) DMI in the latest (211) Gemplus RAD kit. I hope it will surface
again in some form later, maybe it can in some way be combined with the
OpenCard approach.

All this IMHO of course, I am still kind of a smartcard novice.

Regards, Luc Peerdeman.


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