| Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Administration Guide |    
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| Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 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 3.0 is contained in the Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Installation Guide. You must be familiar with that introductory material before using this guide. The RFID Software is supported on several operating system (OS) platforms, application servers and databases. Refer to the Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Release Notes for the latest details.
The RFID Software uses the identification scheme for Electronic Product Code (EPC) data formatting as defined in the specification EPC_Tag Data Standards Version 1.1 Rev.1.27.
This section includes the following topics:
An EPC functions similarly to a Universal Product Code (UPC) as found in common bar code technology. The EPC is an identification scheme for universally identifying physical objects using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and other means. The standardized EPC data format consists of an EPC (sometimes called an EPC Identifier) that uniquely identifies an individual object, and may include an optional Filter Value when it is necessary to enable the effective and efficient reading of the EPC tags.
The EPC encoded in an RFID tag can identify the manufacturer, product, version, and serial number. The EPC also provides an extra set of digits to identify unique items.
The major part of the standard EPC data field is the EPC Identifier. The optional Filter Value field within the EPC can supplement the basic EPC tag readings. For various applications and industries, the EPC Version 1.1 standard specifies the following coding schemes:
For any given RFID tag with an EPC data format, an entry in its header field indicates which coding scheme can be applied.
Independent from underlying physical media, such as RFID tags or bar codes, 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."
The EPC standard further defines identity URI as "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 four categories:
An encoding identity layer can also be conceptualized and would comprise a pure identity together with additional information such as the 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, is an encoding rendered in a concrete implementation suitable for a particular machine-readable form (such as a specific kind of radio frequency tag or specific database field). This encoding can be conceived as a lower layer, like the ISO's Open System Interconnect with its modeling of physical entities near the bottom of the stack.
The RFID Software consists of the RFID Event Manager and the RFID Information Server modules. The RFID Event Manager gathers information from RFID readers, filters the information, and provides the processed information to the RFID Information Server module or to a third-party Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
The following illustration shows how the RFID Event Manager and RFID Information Server fit into the EPC network.
The RFID Information Server is a Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (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. You can find the supported software listed in the Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Release Notes.
The 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. See Enabling Usage of JMS With the RFID Information Server.
For developer convenience, a Java client library to programatically access the RFID Information Server is provided. The API to query and manipulate data in the RFID Information Server is independent of the protocol used. See the Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Developer's Guide for API information.
| Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Administration Guide | 819-4685-10 |
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