a sample OPOS Service Object example for an MSR device
The purpose of this project is to investigate what is required to implement an OPOS Service Object. As part of this we are investigating the following:
- OPOS Common Control objects and interfaces
- OPOS Service Control objects and interfaces
- Microsoft COM technology
- Microsfot ATL for development of COM objects and User Interfaces
See Monroe Consulting Service web site at http://monroecs.com/ for an explanation of the OPOS standards along with quite a few materials and links to OPOS related information.
The Monroe Consulting Services web site has this explantion for OPOS: The first widely-adopted POS device standard is OPOS. OPOS was initiated by Microsoft, NCR, Epson, and Fujitsu-ICL to help integrate POS hardware into applications for the Windows™ family of operating systems. OPOS uses COM technology, and is therefore language independent. The acronym stands for "OLE for POS", which is somewhat dated due to the renaming of "OLE" to "ActiveX" and "COM". But OPOS has been retained for historical and recognition reasons.
In order to test OPOS Common Control objects and OPOS Service Objects you will need a test container. We have been using a combination of the NCR Retail Services Manager, RSM, and the Microsoft POS .NET example UI whose source code is part of the Microsoft POS .NET 1.12 installation.
Both of these allow us to exercise the OPOS Service Object that we are developing. The Microsoft POS .NET utility is especially useful since it has separate buttons which correspond to the various OPOS Common Control object methods such as Claim(), Open(), etc.