UnifiedPOS

UnifiedPOS 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. (See Relationships for more details.) Version 1.12 has been approved by the ARTS Board and is now the current standard.

Developed by a joint team of retailer and industry technical experts following published policies and procedures, UnifiedPOS provides a consistent and exact framework for programming point of sales devices that is platform independent and vendor neutral.

UnifiedPOS Announces the Availability of WS-POS and

UnifiedPOS Version 1.13 Specification for Review

Web Services for Point of Service (WS-POS) Specification

UnifiedPOS Version 1.13-RC2.1 Specification RFC (Request for Comments)

UnifiedPOS version 1.13 is available for public review. This version will be available for at least 30 days. Please be aware this download is over 11mb. Please send all comments to ARTS@nrf.com.

Version 1.13 of this specification, released at the NRF 2009 Annual Convention, includes updates that reflect feedback from device service developers and application development programmers as a result of using Version 1.12 and previous versions of this standard. Version 1.13 does not contain any new POS peripheral devices.

Extensive changes have been made to the XMLPOS section which should be reviewed carefully for those planning on applications that use XMLPOS.

The Web Services for Point of Service (WS-POS) technical document is intended to provide retail devices, terminals and servers with the capabilities necessary to interoperate in a detached, dynamic network as well as more typical retail LANs by leveraging defined web service specifications. WS-POS is the retail peripheral device piece of the overall ARTS support of web services for retail applications.

From a business user point of view, WS-POS allows retail peripherals to be used across the network. For example, an application on a wireless terminal or a web server could use a printer either attached to another POS terminal or kiosk or directly to the network. From a device manufacturer’s point of view, only one device driver will have to be developed and supported thus reducing cost. A WS-POS-supported device can be accessed by an application running on any platform. As this specification is utilized in the future UnifiedPOS Version 2 standard, the potential of sharing devices between multiple applications also becomes a goal.

A significant part of this document is a profile of the minimal web-service specifications necessary to support this remote device interoperability. This profile serves to constrain and articulate the usage of web service standards in order to facilitate interoperability and ensure appropriateness of the chosen web-services specifications for a WS- POS implementation at the retail store. The WS- POS specification utilizes XMLPOS to format and transport data. This is a translation of the UnifiedPOS retail peripherals specification to XML messages that are used by WS-POS to communicate across the network..

UnifiedPOS Version 1.13 Specification (Will be posted in the next 30 days)

UnifiedPOS is the acronym for Unified Point of Service. It is an architectural specification for application interfaces to point-of-service devices that are used in the retail environment. This standard, which has been in existence for several years, is both operating system independent and language neutral and defines:

• An architecture for application interface to retail devices.

• A set of retail device behaviors sufficient to support a range of POS solutions.

Currently, 36 different point-of-service peripheral types are supported by the standard. Platform dependent implementations are contained in specification appendices and are available for Java, and Microsoft OPOS and .NET.

Version 1.13 of this specification, released at NRF in 2009, includes updates that reflect feedback from device service developers and application development programmers as a result of using Version 1.12 and previous versions of this standard. Version 1.13 does not contain any new POS peripheral devices.

Also Available for Download:; UnifiedPOS version 1.12; New features and enhancements in this release include:; New appendices describing the XMLPOS Mapping Reference, Systems Management Information and Device Statistics;
New device categories: Belt, Electronic Value Reader/Writer, Gate, Item Dispenser, Lights, RFID Scanner: Clarifications of the handling of FreezeEvents, DataEventEnabled, and Asynchronous Output Processing;; Added support for AAMVA as well as Data Encryption, Card Authentication and Device Authentication to the MSR category;; Added New Methods to the fiscal printer and support for Sweden and the Swedish Krona.; For a complete list of the significant changes, please refer to Appendix E in the document.; UnifiedPOS 1.11 volume 2; Volume 2 of the UnifiedPOS Architecture for Retail specifies several different extension technologies that complement the UnifiedPOS Architecture defined in Volume 1. Included in this volume is the introduction to RAPOS, or Remote Access for Point of Service, and WAMPOS, which stands for Web Access Model for Point of Service.; Comments from nonmembers are welcome when accompanied by an IP Release Form. Contact ARTS@nrf.com for more information.