How do the smart card terminals impact the Cyberflex development cycle?
TL: When we talk about a terminal, we are talking about a device that has an application running in it that requires a smart card for execution. A terminal can be anything from a pretty simple device, such as card readers that attach to PCs, all the way to a PC or an ATM. In between are the point-of-sale terminals used with cash registers and vending machine terminals. Existing terminals can use Java cards since a Java card application can be developed that emulates exactly the existing smart card used with the terminals. This means that Java cards and conventional cards can co-exist in a system. To take advantage of the power of a Java card, though, one might want to use the terminal to interact with the card in a more innovative way; for example, dynamically loading applications.
