RFID – From Hype to Reality

1. RFID – From Hype to Reality Dr. David Allais - invented one of the leading bar code symbologies of today: Commenting on RFID - “does everything, costs nothing and fits on the head of a pin” Matt SmithSenior Solutions Architect

2. Origins of RFID • Radio Frequency Identification • Basic technology is not new • Origins back in 40’s and 50’s with research into radio and radar • IFF for military aircraft • Commercial applications appear in 70’s • ID cards, animal identification, anti-theft

3. How RFID Works Air Interface Antennae RFID Reader RFID TAG Transponder Antennae Memory Application

4. Many Faces of RFID Hand - held Desktop Outside Combo bar Fixed Antennas code/RFID Passive Tags – No power Active Tags – Power, more RFID Readers storage, greater range

5. RFID Tag Memory Structure Tag-IT HF-I ISO 15693 (Texas Instruments)

6. RFID Challenges • Technology isn’t perfect • Environmental factors can reduce read accuracy • Tags aren’t free • Cost of tags must be incorporated into products • Which standards to adopt • Different standards result in incompatible systems

7. RFID Rewards • Reduced labor costs • Reading process is simplified • Greater inventory accuracy • Always know what’s on shelf, in warehouse, … • Greater insight into business process • Track shipments from suppliers, to customers, … • Reduced shrinkage • Theft, accidental loss, expiration, …

8. Why RFID is often RFI “Don’t” • The business case often doesn’t stack-up • The costs of tags is still very high – for example, an RFID solution for Tesco would currently cost hundreds of millions for the tags alone • The data volumes generated are huge – we’ll discuss this later • Data mining must be done quickly and results distributed up and down the supply chain regardless of size of partners • Infrastructure supporting the system must be highly available – you can’t have hours worth of data “pending”! • Manageability is critical, but large scale RFID can’t be centralised – we’ll see why a bit later

9. A confluence of events • But… • The promise of RFID is enormous! • We are about to see a market break-through for a number of reasons • Tags – pioneering research by QinetiQ • Complex Metal Printing – print the tag! • Potential to achieve sub 3 pence tags • Data Distribution – Sonic delivers a Service Oriented Architecturefor RFID with world’s first Enterprise Service Bus • Storage – object databases come of age • Object Store uses a patented Cache-ForwardArchitecture to produce RFID Accelerator – more later

10. RFID – The Tags • Business case • Tags are too expensive • Passive = $0.5 for 1 million – Active = few dollars • This will change – ink print – QinetiQ Metal Printing • http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3860229.stm • More innovation is needed – particularly from research teams, universities, and tech companies. • Or we can just order them in serious bulk • Gillette ordered 500 million tags in 2003 • Technical challenges once the tags are cheap enough: • What do you do with the data? • How do you perform parallel queries and correlation of data? • How do you move the data around? • Federated SOA appears to be the answer?

11. A quick quiz on the data volumes • Marks & Spenser • Have finished a successful trial with BT, and have just announced that they will go live with RFID across 53 stores by 2006 • Any idea what volume of data this will generate? • Tags reads per minute for this project? Tags per year – total? • Data Volume: • Need over 2000 tag reads per minute for this project • Will read over 500 million tags per year with other RFID projects in the pipeline • Will create dozens of down-stream events per tag read • Creating a data flows of well over 3.4 gigabytes per hour • Then you need to correlate and query this data!

12. RFID Challenges • Embarrassment of riches! • Lots of things to track in each sector: passengers, baggage, trolleys, vehicles, pallets, clothes, high value consignments, even trees! • Enormous potential for exponential growth in data volumes • Multiple uses cases and business benefits • Many challenges and pitfalls • Which are the quick-win projects to roll out first? • ALL generated data has a transactional function • Where do you keep it, and transact it? • Single, common infrastructure for all RFID projects • Architect an enterprise platform level

13. Looking at non-viable and viable architecture for RFID

14. Why not use a centralised processing architecture? Shipping app Shipping app Shipping app Shipping app … Location 1 Location 2 Location 3 Location N(approx 2,000) Central Store BLOB Storage Expensive Parsing and Validation Message Store 150 Million Messages 4000 inserts/sec. 16MB/sec. Network 20-30M Package DeliveryScans (4K msg.) 20-30M Package Origination Scans (4K msg.) 1-10 Waypoint Scans/Package (200-2K byte msgs.) Otherwise known as the Hub and Spoke

15. With data distributed through this??? Key: Internal data flow External data flow Pending data flow NAME System appears twice Planned systems CCPL CCSN SSI PBRIMS IPMS TAN MP/F Common Interface Layer NOR Network AT&T Corp Books AA PBCC FIMS RIMS PRECISE MI PARIS PR AIM JOUR SUMMIT 4.0 GL Billstar 3 COR SBIR C/CA Bill Day RAP TAPS PCDB Billstar 1 POS Billing CARTS PDS SOFE POS-R EC PDS-ERA AUTS Data Svc MRDB ORBITS BOSS ESS COR Athena Advantage CABS REMS Sales Agency EmFiSys TRAINS TOPS RCRMS PB Awards LIDB Data OSMOP 3rd Pty CPNI Warehse BRIS PaSS Pay by EARS Bill Print ATR E911 NRSS Phone WTS MAPS MP TWIST CL USAGE CONF COIN Customer RM MTR EM EXCH REVE Profile IFS CCP CESAR Listing Svc Bill Format DOMS SORD DCN DRS ERMIS AOG TCMS APTOS TOR MLT Directory Delivery Tech PDP LSD&C PDR ISCP SCP SOCS PB1 STP APTOS ATC SMS SDDL-POF PMIS SDID Sales Comp ORGIS NSDM IRSS SORD IS ASOS PBOD CIAS MI Starwriter Exch Plus BAIF CRMS Customizer ANS IP GIR COSMOS 800 ALRU Network AP PBITS Electronic LMOS Service Custom CUR/CAR SOAC Bonding TSA 800 DB Manager SPACE NTAS DFG MTAS TESS ISIS LATIS PREMIS PVI WFA/C CRAS CMTS MP/F AMOS IPMS CID/SAM FTDM LMOS OPAS NSDB PBVS /Loopview SARTS Paging LOC CNR Mech Eng NAA INPLANS FLEXCOM CSTAR TIRKS CSFT LFACS FIRST NI Predictor LEIS CLONES TMM PVS | PMI CMS SOAC MARCH OPS/INE (CCRS) REACT MOBE 2001 MOPICS PMM JOB TNDS/TK FWS SABR INA Network Network TNM NMA-F Transport PAWS COSMOS DCOS-2000 LOMS WM NOR NOR NDS-TIDE NetPilot EADAS DSC AT&T AT&T TIRKS PICS Separation SEAS /DPCR FEPS EDIIS SCS FDOC ConnectVu TAGS CIDB ComnLang Taskmate

16. Distribution/Management Architecture • Fundamental Problems: • Centralised Event Collection will soon be overwhelmed • Central Discovery and Naming Service (ONS) does not scale • Need to distribute operations to reduce the flow of events at the middle…but… • De-centralised operations create new problems • Distributed Query Execution • Deployment, Configuration, Control, Monitoring • Synchronisation/Versioning • Autonomous Operation • Federation

17. Enterprise SOA Vision Benefits address long-standing IT dilemmas PORTAL SERVICE USER-DEFINED SERVICE BATCH SYSTEM BROAD-SCALE INTEROPERABILITY APPLICATION SERVER MODULARITY / REUSE RELATIONAL DATABASE INCREMENTAL DEPLOYMENT PROCESS SERVER FLEXIBILITY LEGACY APPLICATION What most people concentrate on are the endpointsBut the problem area is the “white-space” of SOA

18. Architectural Challenges of SOA platform • Dependability • Reliable, high-performance communications between services • High Availability = Business continuity • Security • Flexibility – this is a changing environment • Mechanism to orchestrate process through the network • Ability to dynamically re-configure services to new uses • Ability to normalise in-flight documents between services • Bridge multiple low-level middleware technologies • Reach and scale • Connect any resources regardless of where they are deployed • Scale from initial phases to arbitrarily large deployment • Retain visibility and control of distributed infrastructure

19. Enterprise SOA can help RFID Using an ESB to address this SOA “white-space” Using an ESB as the backbone PORTAL SERVICE USER-DEFINED SERVICE BATCH SYSTEM BROAD-SCALE INTEROPERABILITY APPLICATION SERVER MODULARITY / REUSE RELATIONAL DATABASE INCREMENTAL DEPLOYMENT PROCESS SERVER FLEXIBILITY HIGH AVAILABILITY LEGACY APPLICATION

20. The Purpose of an ESB Connect, Mediate and Control WITHOUT AN ESB WITH AN ESB Connect Control Mediate

21. Connect applications and services Multiple on-ramps, dependable communications • Connect old and new • Legacy applications, RDBMS • J2EE, .Net • Web services • B2B protocols • Link services and processes across the extended enterprise • Establish robust, scalable and secure communications Connect • Examples: • Securely link internal processes with those of business partners. • Portal integration All connected resources are first-class citizens

22. Mediate services Bridge and extend incompatible technologies • Reconcile system incompatibilities • Communication Protocol • Interaction model • Transform and enrich data • Map between data formats • Split, aggregate and enrich data • Provide flexible routing and process flow • Decoupled, event-driven services • Intelligent routing • Support stateful process management • Examples: • Aggregate data from multiple SAP systems • Regulation compliance logging Mediate Eliminate service interdependencies

23. Control service interaction Deploy, configure, manage • Dynamically configure, deploy and upgrade hosted services • Establish and alter process flows, routing, Quality of Service • Gain control and visibility over services and their interaction Control • Examples: • Deploy and upgrade 1000s of end-points from a single location. • Detect faults and diagnose problems in complex deployment. Configured, not coded

24. Global reach, global scalability • ESB spans clusters and security infrastructure to form federated environment • Bus topology obviates hub-and-spoke bottlenecks • Deploy what you need, where and when you need it End-to-end SOA

25. ESB helps the architecture, but not the data capture, storage and management

26. RFID: Why RDBMS is too Expensive • RFID Reader is able to read 200 Tags/sec. This results in a data volume 1000 times more than the data volume produced by traditional bar code scanner • Database systems (RDBMS) are able to process several hundreds of transactions per sec. • A non-relational object cache can processes more than 12,000 events per second and run queries at 1.1 million per second • (Reference hardware: Sun 450, 2 CPUs)

27. Object Cache + RFID + ESB • Combining these three technologies • Real-time in-memory event database dedicated to RFID • Object Store + Sonic Software = • First EPC-Database • Electronic Product Code • support of 96-bit EPC CodesClass 1 and Class 0 • EPC Version 1 Standard Compliance • http://www.objectstore.com/products/rfid/index.ssp

28. RFID Accelerator Architecture Enterprise Application BAM Enterprise Application Sonic ESB ObjectStore RFID Accelerator ObjectStore Event Engine Warehouse Event Caching Event Queries Bus Adapters Inline Aggregation RFID Middleware Reader RFID Tags Retail Store Reader EdgeXtend Enterprise and Partner Data PSE RFID Tags

29. An idea of who uses ObjectStore

30. So, we have the tags, standards, storage and SOA architecture platform with the ESB Simply put it all together…

31. Enterprise SOA for RFID Scan/Ship App Event cache Scan/Ship App Event cache Event cache Event cache Scan/Ship App Scan/Ship App ESB as the backbone – pushing the data to the end-points CentralisedINDEX (metadata) APPLICATION SERVER LEGACY APPLICATION

32. Solution: Event Absorption/Filtering • Horizontally distribute workload • Process/filter at the edge (hierarchical refinement) • Drive reference/summary info to the middle • What does this take? • High-speed (in-memory) event correlationwith transactional reliability & availability • Transactionally reliable transport fabric • Distributed Deployment & Management

33. Solution: Evolving/Multi-Vendor Standards • Evolving/incompatible RFID systems can be mediated to conform to internal canonical standards • Event cache service can house data and process that cannot be implemented inside a legacy application, thereby extending the legacy system into the RFID era • What does this take? • Internal design centre • Binds to a highly reliable/available ESB with automatic routing optimisation • Adapters isolate vendor-specific interfaces at the edge • Extensible caching of un-supported “alien” data in flight

34. 10 Principles of RFID Data Management • Digest Data Close to the Source • Correlate Meaningful Events In Context • Buffer Event Streams • Cache Context • Federate Data Distribution in Real Time • Automate Deployment • Age RFID Data Gracefully • Use Code-less, Declarative Processes • Automate Exception Handling • Schema-less backbone/Global canonicals

35. RFID In Practice - Dabac

36. Resources • www.rfidjournal.com • www.epcglobalinc.org • www.btauto-idservices.com • www.objectstore.com • www.sonicsoftware.com • www.progress.com • www.aimglobal.org • www.uc-council.org • www.autoidlabs.org