giving rfid a rest: web-enabled epcis

Giving RFID a REST:Building a Web-Enabled EPCIS

Dominique Guinard, Auto-ID Labs, MIT / ETH Zurich / SAP Research

Mathias Mueller, Jacques Pasquier-RochaSoftware Engineering Group, University of Fribourg Switzerland

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATIONWhat is the EPCIS / EPC Network?

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/moragcasey/]

Dominique Guinard 2IoT 2010

The Web Era

• Rise of the WoT:– Ubiquitous & Scalable– The new universal

integration bus– Machines, appliances,

sensors, mobile phones consumer electronics are in

– Full of apps, widgets and mashups

• Where is RFID?

Web

Dominique Guinard 3IoT 2010

EPC Network in a Nutshell

Integration Interface

4IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

Towards a mashable EPC Network

• Classical SOAP Web Services adequate for business integration (e.g., ERP):– Not so much for more light-weight, ad-hoc integration

• Requirements for new API:– Low entry barrier for developements (easier/cheaper)– Direct data access to users– Lightweight (embedded/mobile devices)– Easy to scale (cloud)

Pautasso, Cesare, Olaf Zimmermann, and Frank Leymann. “Restful web services vs. "big" web services: making the right architectural decision.” WWW '08

Pautasso, Cesare, and Erik Wilde. “Why is the Web Loosely Coupled? A Multi-Faceted Metric for Service Design.” WWW’09

5IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

ARCHITECTUREHow do we Web-enable the EPC Network?

[flickr.com/photos/julianbleecker ]

Dominique Guinard 6IoT 2010

Recap: The Web of Things

D. Guinard, V. Trifa, E. Wilde: " A Resource Oriented Architecture for the Web of Things” IoT 2010

7IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

API Design: Addressability & Connectedness

• Resources:– Locations, Readers,

Tagged objects (EPC), etc.

• Links:– Every resource is

linked to its children.– And to relevant

resources.

http://.../location/migros:basel/reader/warehouse:incoming/time/2009-12-21T13:22:04.000Z/event/EPC

Dominique Guinard 8IoT 2010

Wait, the EPCIS is not Hierachical!

• The EPCIS data isn‘t really hierachical:– Complex queries become cumbersome:

• all events occurring in 2010 for urn:epc:id:sgtin: 0057000.123430.2025

– Query-based interface

http://.../eventquery/result?param1=value1&..&paramN=valueN

http://.../eventquery/result?reader=sap:regensdorf:frc:storage&epc=urn:epc:id:sgtin:200057000.*

Dominique Guinard 9IoT 2010

Design: Representations

• Several representations:– XML: EPCIS standard– JSON: Web integration– HTML: browsability

• CSS for browser• CSS for mobile (IUI)

– Selected through “HTTP content negotiation”

• Atom feeds for subscription to queries.

Dominique Guinard 10IoT 2010

Integration Strategy for WS-* / REST

• Woven REST:+ Integrated to the core

+ Resource-oriented object model

+ no overhead

• REST Adapter:+ Independant module+ Hot-pluggable on any

EPCIS implementation+ Full legacy support

Dominique Guinard 11IoT 2010

Implementation: EPCIS REST-adapter

12IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

Performance Evaluation

13IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

PROTOTYPE APPLICATIONWhat is it good for?

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/parmiter/]

Dominique Guinard 14IoT 2010

EPC Mashup Dashboard

• Javascript mashup (GWT).

• Uses the REST API.• Extensible widget

base.

Dominique Guinard 15IoT 2010

Leveraging Other Web Platforms: Sharing

D.Guinard, M. Fischer, V. Trifa . Sharing Using Social Networks in a Composable Web of Things. WoT 2010

16IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

Take Home Notes

• Making the EPC Network part of the WoT:– unlocks new types of app (mobile, mashups, …)– allows for easy: scaling (cloud), browsing, sharing and

bookmarking of RFID data

• REST and SOAP-based Web Services interfaces can cohabit

17IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

Challenges & outlook

• Incentive for companies to share data…• Sharing mechanism:

– EPC Discovery standard– Social Access Controller / Friends and Things

• We are currently working on:– Adapting other standards to the Web (E.g.,

TDT)– Creating a mashup platform for common EPC

applications.

18IoT 2010 Dominique Guinard

Thanks a lot for your attention

• EPCIS REST-adapter is Open Source (LGPL)

• Module of the Fosstrak EPCIS

• Contact:– Dominique Guinard– www.guinard.org

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www.webofthings.com/rfid