Participation
in Standardization
In 2002,
Intralight was invited to and participated in a retail industry committee
meeting and live POS/back office interoperability demo, where Intralight demonstrated
our POS integration capabilities using standards based development.
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Attendees
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POS/Back Office Interoperability Demo Wows nacs.tech
Crowd
April 24, 2002
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DALLAS - Looking for all the
world like a NASA control center, with banks of computers and POS terminals and
flanked by giant video screens, a hotel ballroom was transformed Tuesday into
a mock 'convenience store' to show that transmitting XML documents from the
POS to the back office, across multiple platforms, is possible today. "What we're seeing today is seven
years of theory put into practice for the first time," said James
Hervey, NACS director, owner/operator community. The "proof of concept"
demonstration, to show the utility of the guidelines developed by the NACS
Technology Standards Committee's POS/Back Office Working Group, was the talk
of nacs.tech. Beginning the second day of the convenience store industry's
technology conference and exhibition, the demonstration showed the use of
XML, eXtensible Markup Language, as a data interchange methodology for
POS/Back Office integration. |
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Participating companies were:
Advantage Retail Automation; Apigent Solutions; AT Systems; Fiscal;
Gilbarco/Veeder-Root; Intralight; PDI; Pinnacle; Radiant Systems; Retalix; SofTechnics;
Tokheim; and Verifone. Each company had its own POS terminal or computer set up
on the workshop room dais, and video displays showed attendees each step in the
process - scanning in products at the POS, the transmission of XML documents,
and the transaction reflected at the back office. Transactions ran both ways:
Prices were changed at the back office, transmitted via XML to the POS
terminals, and new purchases reflected the updated prices.
"It's exciting to be able to
demonstrate that interoperability of POS to back office using different vendors
is possible," said Teri Richman, NACS senior vice president, who moderated
the demonstration. "What you're seeing is a 'report card' on these
standards."