Monday October 26, 2009

The JavaCard team have been cranking away. Development on the 3.0 version is finally (almost) finished, and it's pretty amazing. Java Card 3 is available in two Editions.

Classic Edition

This is the same as Java Card 2 with some enhancements/bug fixes. It is almost 10 years young and is the most popular platform for the SIM and ID markets.

Connected Edition

This is the next generation Java Card technology:

• JDK6 Compatible VM: Except for floats, it support class file version 50.
• Full Java Language support: Java Card 2 has restrictions on the language itself. But JC3 has no limits. You can use all language features like annotations, enhanced for-loops etc... (except floating point)
• Rich API: This is mixture of CLDC, GCF, Servlet, JavaCard2 API, Sockets, Threads, Transactions ...
• Three application models and two library models, which makes it possible to have virtually any kind of secure application on JC3:
  • Servlets, extended-Applets, Classic-Applets
  • Extension-Library and Classic-Library
• Servlet Container with Servlet 2.5 support.
• HTTP and HTTPS interface: No need for special client programming. Use any web client to reach JC3.
• Still tiny(!!):24K RAM, 128K EEPROM, 512K ROM with a 32 bit processor
• It is not just "Card" any more: With the newly added USB interface this technology can go beyond Smart Cards into devices like secure USB tokens, Secure Personal Databases, Embedded Servers, WebDAV compliant thumb drives and more.

Last but not least, there is a Netbeans Plugin for easy development. Nightly builds of NetBeans point to the latest JavaCard plugin.