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Java APIs: Playing Monopoly with Java via the JECF

Online commerce takes new steps with the Java Electronic Commerce Framework

By Rawn Shah, JavaWorld.com, 12/01/96

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In my recent trip to New York, I dropped by the Forbes Museum to see the collection of Faberge Eggs, toy soldiers, and original Monopoly board games belonging to the empire of the Forbes family (which is most well known, of course, for Forbes magazine). Almost anyone who has played a board game is familiar with Monopoly. The principle of the game is simple enough that even an 8-year-old can play. The amazing thing is that it has lasted well over 50 years with few changes and still remains a success.

The creation of a concept that lasts like Monopoly happens rarely. This decade we will see a similarly successful and long-lasting concept emerge, a new concept that takes financial matters into a different dimension: global online electronic commerce. The interesting thing is that it places quite a large emphasis on the network that is supposed to survive a nuclear attack but has at one time or another fallen prey to rampaging teenagers.

For a relatively insecure environment such as the Internet, there is quite a significant amount of development for future online commercial transactions. With the recent test release of the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) system, we see the next generation of online commerce efforts backed by such giants of the financial industry as Visa and MasterCard as well as computer industry bigwigs like IBM, Netscape, Microsoft, and SAIC.

In addition, the established secure communications protocols and standards such as SSL and RSA continue to thrive in their own area of the transmission of high-risk information such as credit card numbers, financial information, and personal data.

With these ongoing efforts, you might have wondered: "What about providing interfaces to these systems through Java? Sun and JavaSoft would have had to be pretty blind if they were to ignore the future of financial transactions, right?"

Well, don't fret. The Java Electronic Commerce Framework (JECF) will provide the programmatic interface for your Java applets and applications. JECF is the set of APIs that will help you develop commerce applications.

JavaSoft will surely release commercial server applications incorporating these APIs. But as always, do not confuse the API with the implementation product.

How JECF works

The simplest way to describe JECF is to give an example scenario of how JavaSoft envisions online transactions will function. Typically, this involves a user with a browser (capable of running Java, of course) who visits a site with JECF-based services. This JECF-based service can appear in the form of an online-store Java applet in your browser, or it could be a specific Java application on your machine.

Once you have selected the item you wish to purchase, you click on the button on the applet to pay for the goods. Using a payment cassette module in the applet, a message is sent to the remote server indicating the purchase. When the cassette is received, the browser will then display three new applets:

  • A seller identity applet provides a secure authentication of the online store vendor.
  • A tally applet shows a description of the items you wish to purchase.
  • A payment instrument selection applet will show you the payment options you can choose, such as payment by credit cards, debit cards, checks, and other means.


Here's where the JavaWallet comes in. The Wallet holds a set of online credit or debit cards. Each card has your unique card number and identification information stored locally on your system. This encoded information is passed to the store server each time you purchase an item or a basket of items.

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