Curbstone Finds Java Satisfying for Communications Protocols

Published: February 14, 2006

by Alex Woodie

In October 2004, Curbstone rolled out the first public release of the Curbstone Card, a program that processes credit card transaction on the OS/400 server. The Ball Ground, Georgia,-based company, which was founded by ex-ROI alum Ira Chandler, followed up on that initial release with the Curbstone Card version 2.1 in November.

With version 2.1, Curbstone Card has received substantial improvements, namely to its communications components, which were written in Java. Judging from Curbstone's current and past statements about Java and RPG, it considers Java superior to RPG for use in communications protocols, even though Chandler didn't agree with ROI's use of Java, through the Java Card, as a replacement for ROI's RPG-based program, which was called the ROI Card. That is in the past, however, and Java is squarely in Curbstone's future.

Curbstone directly attributes the five enhancements in Curbstone 2.1 to Java. These enhancements include multi-threading, which helps support the "heaviest transaction loads" with Curbstone, and also helps eliminate conflicts when running end-of-day settlement processes concurrently with authorizations. Java also provides the "strong" encryption required to secure sensitive card data according to the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards, the company says, and also consistently delivers sub 3-second response times.

The company also cites two ways that Java lets Curbstone developers be creative. First, the use of the IBM Java Toolkit enabled the optional "hub and spoke" feature in this release, in which multiple OS/400 servers, each running independent applications, can use a centrally installed instance of the Curbstone Card, but each server sees the product's API as if it was running locally on that machine, which lends itself well to centralized management, retention, and reporting for an entire enterprise. Secondly, Java was instrumental in enabling the "insulated deployment" option, where only the communications portion of the Curbstone Card sits in the demilitarized zone (DMZ), while the transaction-handling and retention component is performed on systems behind a firewall.

Curbstone Card 2.1 is available now. Pricing starts at a $7,495. Go to www.curbstone.com for more infor.