JavaPOS or Java for Point of Sale, is an application interface written in Java that provides common access to POS peripheral devices. The advantages are reduced POS Terminal costs, platform independence, and reduced administrative costs. Java is an object-oriented applications programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... POS must not be confused with EFT/POS and POS Terminal used in Electronic payment POS or PoS is an acronym for point-of-sale (or point of purchase). ...

Historical Background

JavaPOS was initiated by SUN Microsystems, IBM, and NCR to help integrate POS hardware into applications for any operating system that supports Java. (see discussion page for a discussion of which platforms are supported). Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. ... NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) is a technology company specializing in solutions for the retail and financial industries. ... An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Java is an object-oriented applications programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ...

The first JavaPOS meeting was convened in April, 1997. The first production release, 1.2, was made in March, 1998. Its final release, 1.6, was in July 2001. Beginning with release 1.7, the JavaPOS committee no longer releases an implementation-specific document. The UnifiedPOS document has added implementation information into an appendix. UnifiedPOS or UPOS is a retailer-driven initiative to combine two existing device interface standards under one specification to allow retailers freedom of choice in the selection of Point of Service devices. ...

In order to encourage adoption of the standard, the interface was based on the already existing OPOS standard. OPOS or OLE for Retail POS consists of an architecture for Win32-based POS device access. ...

External links

• JavaPOS