CWA 14923-1:2004

J/eXtensions for Financial Services (J/XFS) for the Java Platform - Part 1: Base Architecture - Programmer's Reference CWA 14923-1:2004

Scope

J/XFS defines a standardized interface to all common financial devices which can be used
by applications and applets1 written in the Java programming language. One of the reasons
why these new banking applications are written in the Java language is that these programs
are supposed to run on many different hardware platforms. One of the main obstacles in
doing platform independent programming is accessing devices.
One of the main goals of this standard is to allow access to banking devices in a 100% pure
Java way on both thin and thick clients, e.g. on a network computer as well as in a Linux,
WinNT, OS/2 or Unix workstation.
Another goal is to allow the remote access to devices on different machines. Additional
efforts have to be done to find and access these devices. This is the main reason why
central administration processes and an additional communication layer are also defined by
this architecture.
If only local access to devices is needed, an implementation may omit this communication
layer. No change is required to the Device Controls or Device Services. So, neither the
application programmer nor the hardware manufacturer who programs a Device Service
need be aware of whether or not a communication layer exists in the middle.
Due to the nature of network computers which are supported as clients, it is not possible to
guarantee that local persistent storage possibilities exist on each client. Therefore, any
configuration information must be kept on a central server. If local storage exists and no
central configuration possibilities are required, all configuration information can also be
kept on the local workstation.
The basic architecture of J/XFS is similar to the JavaPOS2 architecture. It is event driven
and asynchronous.