WarpCharge Information

History
WarpCharge provides the missing piece in your OS/2 e-commerce solution : the payment system.

When we at Theta Band Software tried to setup our own OS/2 online store, we discovered that the lack of OS/2 payment software made it impossible to complete without additional computers running other operating systems, because the main vendors of credit card processing software, IC Verify and CyberCash, in their infinite arrogance, always refused to support OS/2 as a web server platform for their payment systems.

We could not take "no" as an answer, especially since we knew a lot about the technology involved in doing secure online payments. Rather than switch away from our favorite platform, we decided in mid-1998 to dedicate half of our company resources to the development of a native OS/2 online payment system. This system was initially designed for our own internal use, but it quickly became apparent that it could benefit other companies facing similar problems with online payment on OS/2. We decided to make this a product and called it WarpCharge, an early version of which we demonstrated at Warpstock in October 1998. In May 1999, IBM shipped OS/2 Warp Server for E-business with a strong focus on electronic commerce, and WarpCharge complements it perfectly.

Technical Information
WarpCharge has a very modular and particular architecture. While you do not need to understand all the internal details of WarpCharge in order to use it, we recommend that you pay close attention so that you can better understand how to setup your own solution later.

There are three different ways to operate WarpCharge.

Phone or mail orders
The graph below describes the processing of transactions submitted manually by an operator for mail or phone orders.

This is the simplest type of order, which uses the provided simple REXX order scripts that you may customize at will.

The following is a sample transaction :
 * The operator receives an order over the phone.
 * He runs a simple REXX script to enter the transaction information.
 * The REXX script uses an OS/2 Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanism, a Named Pipe, to contact the WarpCharge plug-in, which is an OS/2 Named pipe Server running in a Netscape Communicator for OS/2 background process. The script passes all the transaction information to the plug-in over the Named Pipe.
 * The WarpCharge plug-in uses a Netscape Communicator function to initiate a secure connection to Electronic Clearing House over the Internet to authorize the credit card payment.
 * Upon receipt of the authorization answer from ECHO, the WarpCharge plug-in relays the answer back to the REXX order script via the OS/2 Named Pipe.
 * The REXX order script interprets the authorization answer, logs the transaction, and tells the operator whether it was successful or not.
 * The operator can then take appropriate action - for example give the customer an immediate order confirmation over the phone, then package and ship the order.

Typically, after the operator has entered the transaction information, it will take WarpCharge between 5 and 10 seconds to process.

Note that the same sequence applies not just to credit card authorizations but also other types of transactions, such as Deposit, Credit, or Address Verification.

Web orders
The graph below describes the processing of transactions submitted by a customer to a merchant secure web server and processed real-time.

The real-time web processing differs from the manual processing in that the transaction data is no longer entered by the operator but comes from a customer web browser.


 * When the customer submits his order on his web browser, it is transmitted securely over the Internet to your secure OS/2 web server.
 * The web server executes a CGI order script written in REXX, which will parse the transaction data.
 * The REXX CGI script uses an OS/2 Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanism, a Named Pipe, to contact the WarpCharge plug-in, which is an OS/2 Named pipe Server running in a Netscape Communicator for OS/2 background process. The script passes all the transaction information to the plug-in over the Named Pipe.
 * The WarpCharge plug-in uses a Netscape Communicator function to initiate a secure connection to Electronic Clearing House over the Internet to authorize the credit card payment.
 * Upon receipt of the authorization answer from ECHO, the WarpCharge plug-in relays the answer back to the REXX CGI order script via the OS/2 Named Pipe.
 * The REXX CGI order script interprets the authorization answer, logs the transaction, and sends your customer an HTML page stating whether the order was approved or not.
 * When customized, the REXX order script can also do extra processing if the order was approved, for example deliver a product electronically directly to the customer, add him to a customer database, or send him an e-mail confirming the order.

Custom application orders
Because the WarpCharge REXX interface is fully documented, you can create your own REXX order script and integrate it with any OS/2 application supporting REXX, or with your own custom application. The rest of WarpCharge works the same as in the other cases, only the data source and recipient is different and customized in your REXX script.

Note: the use of a firewall between your computer and the Internet is optional in all cases. OS/2 can be made adequately secure without the use of a firewall when properly configured.