SOARware: Treading through the crossroads of RFID middleware and SOA paradigm

RFID technology finds immense applicability in domains utilizing identification as the base operation such as in access control, localization, etc. It may be designed to work well for either singular or a limited range of applications. However, the strict-coupling between applications and RFID equipment must be relaxed to scale up their usability. In order to do so, RFID middlewares are employed, allowing the applications to become independent of the underlying complexities. In this paper, we present interplay of all that contemporary RFID middlewares provide, and actual expectations from them, in terms of desirable ‘‘features’’ and ‘‘aspects’’. While the aspects are more business specific, features are implementation specific. We extract implemented features from the study of RFID middlewares, which in turn, realize design aspects. We breakdown these features into respective functions set in order to, (a) unravel functional overlap between these features both horizontally and vertically, and (b) observe that each of these functions implements part of system level business design aspects. We conclude that an appreciation of overlap both at the functional-level and at the design aspects-level allows simpler yet comprehensive implementations of RFID middlewares. We propose SOA-based strategy that helps to consolidate representative design aspects of a well-federated RFID middleware. We present middleware as a service (MaaS) architecture, which encapsulates underlying complexities of RFID systems from the enterprise application while taming them in two-dimensions, simultaneously. MaaS achieves horizontal taming through exposed services, while vertical taming is achieved through their need-based invocation. We have successfully shown through prototype implementation that MaaS allows modular invocation of services agreed through contract, realizing SOA-based RFID paragon and achieves key design aspects. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.