| RFID Software Administration Guide |    
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| RFID Software Administration Guide |
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| C H A P T E R 1 |
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Sun Java System RFID Software Introduction |
An overview of the Sun Java System RFID Software is contained in the Sun Java System RFID Software 2.0 Installation Guide. You should be familiar with that introductory material before using this book. The following topics are described:
Sun Java System RFID Software is supported on several operating system (OS) platforms, application servers and databases. The support matrix is shown in TABLE 1-1.
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Sun Java System Application Server 7 |
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Sun Java System Application Server 7 |
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Sun Java System Application Server 7 |
Sun Java System RFID Software follows the identification scheme from "EPC_Tag Data Standards Version 1.1 Rev.1.26".
This section includes the following topics:
The EPC or Electronic Product Code functions similarly to a Universal Product Code or UPC as found in common bar code technology. It is an identification scheme for universally identifying physical objects via Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and other means. The standardized EPC data format consists of an EPC (or EPC Identifier) that uniquely identifies an individual object, and may include an optional Filter Value when judged to be necessary to enable effective and efficient reading of the EPC tags.
The EPC encoded in an RFID tag can identify the manufacturer, product, version and serial number, and also provides an extra set of digits to identify unique items.
The major part of the standard EPC data field is an EPC Identifier which uniquely identifies an object. The optional Filter Value field within an EPC Identifier can supplement the basic EPC tag readings. For various applications or industries, the EPC Version 1.1 standard specifies any of the following coding schemes:
For any given RFID entity with an EPC data format, an entry in its header field indicates which namespace or coding scheme can be applied.
Independent from underlying physical media, such as RFID tags or bar code, a pure identity represents a unique entity in an abstract form. The EPC standard provides this definition for a "Pure identity -- the identity associated with a specific physical or logical entity, independent of any particular encoding vehicle such as an RF tag, bar code or database field." It further defines "Identity URI -- a representation of a pure identity as a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). A URI is a character string representation that is commonly used to exchange identity data between software components of a larger system."
The standard URI representation of EPCs has 4 categories:
1. URIs for pure identities (also called canonical forms) which contain only the EPC fields to identify a physical object. For example, a pure identity URI for GID can be "urn:epc:id:gid:10.1002.2" and a URI for GRAI can be "urn:epc:id:grai:0652642.12345.1234."
2. URIs for EPC Tags which represents the tag encodings. These URIs can be used by application software to write a tag. An example for a Serialized GTIN 64-bit encoding is "urn:epc:tag:sgtin-64:3.0652642. 800031.400."
3. URIs for Raw Bit Strings which represents invalid bit-level patterns as a single decimal number. For example: "urn:epc:raw:64.20018283527919."
4. URIs for EPC Patterns. Each pattern URI refers to a set a EPCs for the EPC filtering purpose. For example:, a pattern urn:epc:pat:sgtin-64:3.0652642.[1024-2047].* refers to any SGTIN Identifier 64-bit tag with Filter value as three , Company Prefix as 0652642, Item Reference in the range from 1024 to 2047 and any Serial Number.
An Encoding identity layer may also be conceptualized -- comprising a pure identity together with additional information such as filter value, rendered into a specific syntax (typically consisting of value fields of specific sizes). A given pure identity may have a number of possible encodings, such as a Barcode Encoding, various Tag Encodings, and various URI Encodings. Encodings may also incorporate additional data besides the identity (such as the Filter Value used in some encodings), in which case the encoding scheme specifies what additional data it can hold.
Finally, a Physical Realization of an Encoding -- an encoding rendered in a concrete implementation suitable for a particular machine-readable form (such as a specific kind of RF tag or specific database field) - may be conceived as a lower layer, much in the manner of the ISO's Open System Interconnect with its modeling of physical entities near the bottom of the stack.
The RFID Software consists of the Sun Java System RFID Event Manager and Sun Java System RFID Information Server modules. The Sun Java System RFID Event Manager gathers information from RFID readers, filters the information, and provides the processed information to the Sun Java System RFID Information Server module or to a third party ERP system.
The following illustration shows how the Sun Java System RFID Event Manager and Sun Java System RFID Information Server fit into the EPC Network.
The Sun Java System RFID Information Server is a J2EE application that serves as an interface for capture and query of EPC-related data. EPC-related data can include tag observation data from RFID Event Manager as well as information that maps EPCs to higher-level business data. The RFID Information Server is typically used to translate a set of low-level observations into higher-level business functions.
Other applications interface with the RFID Information Server through XML message exchange. The RFID Information Server supports HTTP and Java
Message Service (JMS) technology message transports. All data persists in a relational database. Any RDBMS that supports JDBC can be used as the data store. This release, the RFID Information Server has been tested with the application servers and database software shown in TABLE 1-1.
The Sun Java System RFID Software uses the JMS API as one of its primary methods for communicating with third party software. Communication with the RFID Information Server is stateless and synchronous. If HTTP is used as the transport the client uses HTTP POST to communicate with the RFID Information Server. To implement synchronous requests with JMS API, the client uses a message ID to correlate requests with responses. JMS messages (requests and responses) are posted to a well-known topic. For developer convenience a Java client library to access the RFID Information Server programatically is provided. The API to query and manipulate data in the RFID Information Server is independent of the protocol used.
Sun Java System Application Server provides support for applications such as Sun Java System RFID Software that use the JMS API for messaging operations. JMS technology is a set of programming interfaces that provide a common way for Java applications to create, send, receive, and read messages in a distributed environment.
In particular, the JMS API is the standard used by Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications to perform asynchronous messaging. Accordingly, J2EE components, web components or Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components, can use the JMS API to send messages that can be consumed asynchronously by a specialized EJB component called a message-driven bean (MDB).
Sun Java System Application Server uses Sun Java System Message Queue 3.5 (Message Queue) as its native JMS provider. Message Queue is tightly integrated with Sun Java System Application Server, providing transparent JMS messaging support. This support requires only minimal administration.
The JMS API may be used for tasks such as creating and configuring a JMS Connector in the RFID Event Manager, see Configuring the RFID Event Manager.
All Message Queue utilities are accessible from a command line interface (CLI). Utility commands share common formats, syntax conventions, and options. The CLI usage is documented at http://docs.sun.com/source/817-3727/task_cli.html.
Also see the following documentation as needed:
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Note - The preceding list of documentation is not intended to be a complete list of available documentation for the JMS API or any other Sun Java technology or product. Visit http://docs.sun.com and use the search function to find additional documentation for specific Sun products. |
| RFID Software Administration Guide | 819-1697-10 |
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Copyright © 2004, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.