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ABSTRACT

Application oriented Terminals have been around for quite some time and traditionally they have been hard wired. The approach, however, has been changing recently due to the availability of low cost RAM memory and microprocessors. The main reason for the trend is that although the hard wired Terminals cost less, they do not provide or have the flexibility a customer is provided with a programmable Terminal. However, the cost of programming becomes an important consideration and will vary depending upon what data is available with the Terminal to aid the programmer. In designing the Banking Terminal, Honeywell used a combination of the traditional hard wired implementation approach and the complete programmability approach. Honeywell also provided for a COBOL type "FITAL" (Financial Terminal Application Language) user level language for the customer, to aid programming the transaction sequences which allowed the customer to reduce programming cost. The limited programmability approach reduces the amount of programming, while it does not sacrifice flexibility available to the customer to tailor the Terminal transactions to suit his requirements.