Some pioneering work on an RFID Discovery Service is being driven by Oracle, EPCglobal, Container Centralen and CAPGemini.
The project, around the use of EPCIS middleware, is on the use of something of a Google-like capability, offering functionality that makes it possible to trace the movements of RFID tags in an environment where detailed data can be accessed from associated EPCIS servers.
Details of the pilot are included in an article which first appeared in
Optimize, the Dutch magazine for Oracle developers. Here are its
conclusions:
"A world of data opens up with the addition of the Discovery Service. This ‘Google’
functionality makes it possible to trace the movements of RFID tags in an environment
where detailed data can be accessed from the associated EPCIS server(s). The question
is whether a tracking and tracing application for a “pool manager” such as Container
Centralen should have its own memory (in the form of a database) or whether searches
should be done via queries of the Discovery Service in combination with follow-up queries
on the EPCIS servers of the chain partners.
Normally, because of the large quantity of data involved, we would use a distributed
Data Warehouse approach. But an EPCIS server can contain competitor-sensitive
information that businesses will be unwilling to share in a central Discovery Service.
Web service functionality, on the other hand, is not always the best format for speed
and large quantities of data. Field work must therefore be done to determine how
best to perform (and incorporate into the EPCIS architecture) aggregation queries
on the Discovery Service and the EPCIS servers.
As more experimentation is done on the draft version of the Discovery Service its
functionality will certainly change. One of our early findings is that recording the
location data of a read event in the Discovery Service will add value because it
eliminates a number of follow-up queries to the EPCIS servers. The Oracle
implementation of the Discovery Service is still in development as well, but it
certainly offers great hope for the future."
The Discovery Service will be an intriguing area to follow in 2008. You can read a
background paper from IBM on it here
Technorati tags: IBM Oracle Discovery Service EPCIS EPCglobal Google Container Centralen