Data processing: structural design – modeling – simulation – and em – Simulating electronic device or electrical system
Reexamination Certificate
1998-11-12
2001-08-14
Teska, Kevin J. (Department: 2123)
Data processing: structural design, modeling, simulation, and em
Simulating electronic device or electrical system
C703S021000, C703S022000, C703S024000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06275785
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hardware simulator for a transaction processing system.
2. Description of Related Art
As financial and other commercial institutions become increasingly automated, they continually wish to develop both in-house computer applications and customer related applications. This automation often depends on acquiring newly developed hardware, and it is critical for gaining a competitive advantage that institutions are able to select between different hardware suppliers.
Without the ability to write vendor independent applications, financial institutions would be forced to adapt their ATM applications if they change ATM vendors; similarly supermarket chains would be forced to adapt their applications if they changed till vendors. This increases application development time and costs and restricts the freedom of the institutions to choose between vendors.
WOSA/XFS (Windows Open Services Architecture for Extended Financial Services) is an emerging standard enabling financial institutions, whose branch and office solutions run on the Windows NT platform, to develop applications independent of vendor equipment.
FIG. 1
shows the standard WOSA model. Using this model, an application
10
communicates hardware requests
12
to various hardware devices in, for example, an ATM
14
via a WOSA manager
20
. The application issues transaction requests
12
which are hardware independent, and thus vendor independent. The requests are queued by the WOSA manager
20
which manages concurrent access to the ATM hardware
14
from any number of applications
10
.
When a piece of hardware is installed on the ATM, it registers its controlling software, known as a service provider module (SPM)
30
, with the WOSA manager by using, for example, the Windows registry. The WOSA manager
20
is thus able to relay a hardware request
12
to an appropriate SPM
30
, using the Windows registry as a look-up table. The SPM
30
takes relayed hardware independent requests
16
from the WOSA manager and actuates the appropriate piece of hardware to process the requests. The results of a request can be returned by an SPM
30
synchronously via the WOSA manager
20
or asynchronously by generating a Windows event.
One of the problems associated with developing applications for financial devices such as Automated Teller Machines, kiosks or supermarket tills, is that multiple developers need access to expensive hardware for long periods of the development cycle. This can be inconvenient as users must copy development code and platforms to machines in different locations, for example a laboratory, plus there are inevitable conflicts over access to hardware as deadlines approach.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention provides a hardware simulator for a transaction processing system, said transaction processing system being responsive to transaction requests from an application, said simulator comprising: a set of virtual hardware modules for simulating execution of transaction requests, each virtual hardware module being responsive to transaction requests relayed from said transaction processing system and being adapted to write said requests to an associated shared resource; a simulator tool, said tool being adapted to graphically represent a set of hardware devices, each hardware device graphical representation being associated with a shared resource, said tool being adapted to monitor said shared resource and to update a hardware device graphical representation in response to a transaction request being written to a shared resource associated with said graphical representation.
The hardware simulator according to the present invention solves many early development lifecycle problems by providing to the user a hardware platform that can run on a desktop computer, freeing the user from the requirement that they have access to the real hardware until the time comes for final integration testing.
The hardware simulator according to the present embodiment provides a 100% WOSA/XFS 2.0 compliant virtual hardware environment for the all the devices in, for example, an ATM. It will be seen, however, that the invention is not limited to WOSA or an ATM and is applicable wherever an application needs to be tested with hardware.
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patent: 5263164 (1993-11-01), Kannady
patent: 5577197 (1996-11-01), Beck
patent: 5680610 (1997-10-01), Smith et al.
patent: 5691897 (1997-11-01), Brown et al.
patent: 5740353 (1998-04-01), Kreulen et al.
patent: 5761486 (1998-06-01), Watanabe et al.
patent: WO92/12480 (1992-07-01), None
Bennett et al.; “Derivation and performance of a pipelined transaction processor”; 6th IEEE Symp. Parallel and Distributed Processing; pp. 178-185, Oct. 1994.
Currie Stuart
Flenley John Martin
Hesse Karl O.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Jones Hugh
Teska Kevin J.
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