J/XFS PREFACE

In September 1998, representatives of DeLaRue, IBM, NCR, Sun Microsystems, and Wincor Nixdorf founded a forum to define Java-based standards for the banking industry. The objective of this architecture was to decouple the financial application from the operating system specific software needed to access banking peripherals. The name of this standard is J/eXtensions for Financial Services (J/XFS) for the Java platform.

It is derived from:

• XFS (formerly WOSA/XFS), which is integrated into the Windows platform and not object oriented,

• JavaPOS, which is a specification on how to access Point of Sale devices (Cash register, Scanner, Printer, etc.),

• Experience from numerous custom solutions has been taken into account.

The Financial Device Interface (FDI) for J/XFS emerged from this standard. It allows the customer to use the way defined in the J/XFS standard to gain access to devices unique to the financial industry (account statement printers, magnetic stripe readers, pin pads, cash dispenser machines, etc.) without having to take into account the vendor-specific differences when writing applications.

The FDI for J/XFS contains anything needed to write a Java banking application which needs to access banking peripherals (it does not include, of course, any device drivers for specific hardware). The device services for the end devices are written and supplied by each vendor who sells J/XFS compliant hardware.

Since the FDI for J/XFS is based on the Java platform, the only prerequisite for a J/XFS installation is the existence of a Java Virtual Machine. The implementation of the J/XFSKernel product requires no specific operating system.

Most important, the Financial Device Interface for J/XFS ensures co-existence between existing client-server-based banking applications and newly developed banking applications written in the Java language by providing J/XFS compliant wrappers for existing applications. This way, current customer investments as of already implemented hard- and software for financial systems are protected.

J/XFS was developed to make an evolutionary way of migrating to the new 100% pure Java-based standard possible. This aspect ensures a short transition period between an existing and a new system which is then extensible towards new developments as they become available.

(Extract from FDI of J/XFS, System Overiew.  © Copyright IBM 2000, 2001. All rights reserved)