In this brief paper we would like to position the OpenCard Framework (OCF) visa-vis a similar effort, namely the Interoperability Specification for ICCs and Personal Computer Systems (PC/SC), both of which are designed to offer a standard way to integrate smart cards into computer systems. The fact that two consortia exist which roughly considered work on the same problem has led to some confusion within the industry, in the trade press, and among customers for smart card solutions. After an introduction into the genesis of these two efforts, we will try to attempt to compare the technical architectures, look at the value proposition of each, and explain why they in fact are largely complementary and why there is often a clear choice for one or the other or even both. The
discussion presented here is based on the Version 1 of both PC/SC and OpenCard. To ease the comparison, some liberty was taken to rename the components of both architectures, so they correspond better to commonly used terms when speaking about smart cards.
By: Matthias Kaiserswerth
Published in: RZ2999 in 1998
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