Process Based Application Level Architecture for RFID System
Shiqi Ma, Tang Jiangtao, Dong Wang · 2009
RFID technology has advanced a lot in recent years. In order for enterprises to be competitive, an increasing number have integrated the technology into their operations. Most RFID middleware providers focus on how to shield the bottom device-level heterogeneity to accelerate the application and deployment of this technology. They always concentrate on collecting RFID events to generate standard application-level events and tend to neglect the complexity of enterprise business process, especially the optimization and rearrangement part of the business process during the RFID application deployment. As a result, these middle wares are difficult to integrate with the legacy systems. In this paper, we introduce an application-level architecture of RFID middleware. It is process-based and service & component oriented. The architecture focuses on the top-level application: the business integration of RFID system. The architecture combines using process engine with SCA (service component architecture) and OSGi standard component library. It facilitates system's maintenance by conforming to JMX (Java management extension). We restrict the architecture to conform to the loose-couple RFID mapping mechanisms that is based on rule engine so as to both integrate RFID technology into legacy system and obtain the flexibility as well. At the end part of this paper, we provide solutions for two scenarios of the logistics field using this architecture.