RFID Essentials

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is rapidly changing theway businesses track inventory and assets. From Wal-Mart and Tesco to theU.S. Department of Defense, early efforts are already showing benefits,but software, integration, and data processing for RFID still present achallenge. If you are a developer or an architect charged withdeveloping an RFID system, this book is for you. Drawing on extensiveexperience, Bill Glover and Himanshu Bhatt provide you with essentialinformation on this emerging technology.

With the knowledge you gain in these pages, you will possess theinformation and understanding you need to start designing, building, orintegrating with RFID systems.

In RFID Essentials you will find information on:

• Tags and tag protocols, including the Electronic Product Code (EPC)
• Readers and reader protocols
• RFID middleware
• Security and privacy
• Managing RFID devices
• RFID's impact on your architecture

Bill Glover has been writing software since 1981 and has worked as aprogrammer, lead developer, or architect on systems of all sizes, fromsmall, automated systems controlling dams and feedmills up to acomplete redesign and reimplementation of one of the world's busiesttravel web sites. Bill first worked with RFID in 1995, trackingindividual cattle using ear tags. He is currently a Senior JavaArchitect with Sun Microsystems, Inc., and works with Sun's RFIDconsulting practice and the RFID Test Center.

Himanshu Bhatt heads the U.S. RFID Practice and Software Technology Labfor Sun Microsystems, Inc. Prior to assuming this role, Himanshu wasresponsible for business development and consulting in emerging areasof technology. Himanshu has over 16 years of experience in thearchitecture and development of distributed, multitier systems using ahost of technologies for Fortune 1000 companies. Himanshu has spoken atindustry conferences such as JavaOne and the LoneStar Symposium and haspublished articles on Java/J2EE technologies.

"The Information Age is over. We're entering an era wherenetwork connectivity is almost ubiquitous - it's participate or perish."--Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

"Unique competitive advantage erupts from enterprises that couple theRFID technologies laid out in RFID Essentials with modern business integration using service-oriented architectures. This is the book to read in order to understand this new landscape."--Mark Bauhaus, Senior Vice President, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

"This is a must read for RFID Software and Solution architects and ishighly recommended for anyone needing to gain more insight into the myriad of components, standards and technologies that make up an RFID solutions environment."--Bryan Tracey, Chief Architect, GlobeRanger Corporation

"The authors have done a commendable job of covering a lot of ground inthe RFID space, including the infrastructure needed to share the volumes of data RFID will likely generate."--Graham Gillen, Senior Product Manager, VeriSign