jPOS-CMF!

Yesterday, I made my first contribution to the jPOS Common Message Format (‘CMF’) effort.  Alejandro writes about this good endeavor here.  I’m really dipping my toe in the water here, as I have a lot to learn about DocBook, <oXygen/> (the XML authoring tool I’m using per APR’s suggestion) and GitHub, where the jPOS-CMF sources are located as a public repository.  I made some small changes based on my observation that fields like Function Code (ISO 8583:2003 DE 24) and Reason Code (DE 25) and a few others needed some further definition.  The result of my updates is v1.0.4 of the doc, which you can get here. 

This was an appropriate juncture for me to take a stab at jumping into the jPOS-CMF pool with Alejandro, Dave and Mark.  OLS has also based our IMF on the ISO 8583:2003 standard and with our recent focus on a jCard-related implementation, Dave, Allen and I have spent many hours over the past couple of weeks iterating over our ‘filter’ mechanics (i.e., how to ‘map’ into our CMF from a gateway or other interface) and, specifically, how to use Function Code and Reason Code values to differentiate transaction types for proper TransactionManager identification, routing and participant flow.