Feasibility study through design and implementation of a web services based RFID solution

The increasing availability of cheap yet powerful RFID infrastructure is enabling many organizations to harness the benefits of this technology. However, the growing scale of reader devices and tags of all types by different vendors is also leading to increasing challenges in managing the information flowing from them. The RFID based management systems presently being used by organizations in supply chain visibility and other operations are in the form of standalone localized systems. These systems also have many limitations such as lack of multiple hardware vendor compatibility, limited data storage capacity, primitive event processing rule engines etc. We propose the possibility of a service to store RFID data and manage associated operations independent of the geographic location of the client, or the nature of hardware used by the client. Such a service needs to readdress the issues of database design, complex event processing, data security etc. In this paper, we will discuss these issues and how we are addressing them.