OPOS
Encyclopedia
OPOS or OLE
for Retail POS consists of an architecture for Win32-based POS device access. OPOS is currently deployed on Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows CE. It also consists of a set of POS device interfaces sufficient to support a wide range of POS solutions. It provides a consistent interface to POS
peripherals for use by application creators.
, 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 first OPOS technical meeting was convened in January, 1995. The first production release, 1.01, was made in March, 1996. Its seventh release, 1.6, was in July, 2001. Beginning with release 1.7, the OPOS committee no longer releases an implementation-specific document. The UnifiedPOS
document has added implementation information into an appendix.
The core membership was established with a minimal number of major players in the Retail industry, so that initial work could proceed quickly. The core committee consists of Microsoft Corporation, NCR Corporation, Seiko Epson Corporation, and Fujitsu/ICL. Following the initial release in December 1995, one representative each from Europe and Japan was added to the core group, bringing its membership to the current six. The core committee is tasked with general oversight of the initiative, while all interested parties are welcomed to attend general sessions and provide input.
Control specifications. They expose properties, methods, and events to a containing Application. The controls are invisible at run time, and rely exclusively upon the containing application for requests through methods and sometimes properties. Responses are given to the application through method return values and parameters, properties, and events.
Object Linking and Embedding
Object Linking and Embedding is a technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control eXtension , a way to develop and use custom user interface elements...
for Retail POS consists of an architecture for Win32-based POS device access. OPOS is currently deployed on Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows CE. It also consists of a set of POS device interfaces sufficient to support a wide range of POS solutions. It provides a consistent interface to POS
Point of sale
Point of sale or checkout is the location where a transaction occurs...
peripherals for use by application creators.
Historical background
OPOS was the first widely-adopted POS device standard. It was initiated by MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, NCR
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation is an American technology company specializing in kiosk products for the retail, financial, travel, healthcare, food service, entertainment, gaming and public sector industries. Its main products are self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check...
, Epson, and Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
-ICL to help integrate POS hardware into applications for the Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
family of operating systems. OPOS uses COM
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...
technology, and is therefore language independent.
The first OPOS technical meeting was convened in January, 1995. The first production release, 1.01, was made in March, 1996. Its seventh release, 1.6, was in July, 2001. Beginning with release 1.7, the OPOS committee no longer releases an implementation-specific document. The UnifiedPOS
UnifiedPOS
UnifiedPOS or UPOS is a world wide vendor and retailer driven Open Standard's initiative under the National Retail Federation, Association of Retail Technology Standards to provide vendor...
document has added implementation information into an appendix.
The core membership was established with a minimal number of major players in the Retail industry, so that initial work could proceed quickly. The core committee consists of Microsoft Corporation, NCR Corporation, Seiko Epson Corporation, and Fujitsu/ICL. Following the initial release in December 1995, one representative each from Europe and Japan was added to the core group, bringing its membership to the current six. The core committee is tasked with general oversight of the initiative, while all interested parties are welcomed to attend general sessions and provide input.
General OPOS Model
OLE for Retail POS Controls adhere to the ActiveXActiveX
ActiveX is a framework for defining reusable software components in a programming language-independent way. Software applications can then be composed from one or more of these components in order to provide their functionality....
Control specifications. They expose properties, methods, and events to a containing Application. The controls are invisible at run time, and rely exclusively upon the containing application for requests through methods and sometimes properties. Responses are given to the application through method return values and parameters, properties, and events.