Smart Card Application Development Using the Java Card Technology

Through their combination of portability and security, smart cards are playing an increasingly important role in the rapidly developing areas of electronic commerce and online information services. After giving an overview of smart card characteristics and usage scenarios, we discuss the challenges in the development of smart card applications. Traditionally, this has been a lengthy and difficult process, requiring knowledge of inner workings of the smart card which varied from manufacturer to manufacturer. However, we focus our attention on the current mainstream technology for smart card application development, the Java Card technology. Java Card technology provides a secure, vendor-independent, ubiquitous platform for smart cards that enables rapid development of smart card applications. We present a comprehensive overview of Java Card technology, including concepts, architecture and best practices. Finally, we give a brief survey of the Java Card applet development process.