Installation guide

12 Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Administration Guide • February 2006
Identifier) that uniquely identifies an individual object, and may include an optional
Filter Value when it is necessary to enable the effective and efficient reading of the
EPC tags.
The EPC encoded in an RFID tag can identify the manufacturer, product, version,
and serial number. The EPC also provides an extra set of digits to identify unique
items.
The major part of the standard EPC data field is the EPC Identifier. The optional
Filter Value field within the EPC can supplement the basic EPC tag readings. For
various applications and industries, the EPC Version 1.1 standard specifies the
following coding schemes:
■ General Identifier (GID)
■ A serialized version of the EAN.UCC Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)
■ EAN.UCC Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC)
■ EAN.UCC Global Location Number (GLN)
■ EAN.UCC Global Returnable Asset Identifier (GRAI)
■ EAN.UCC Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI)
For any given RFID tag with an EPC data format, an entry in its header field
indicates which coding scheme can be applied.
Layered Concepts
Independent from underlying physical media, such as RFID tags or bar codes, a pure
identity represents a unique entity in an abstract form. The EPC standard provides
this definition for a pure identity: “The identity associated with a specific physical or
logical entity, independent of any particular encoding vehicle such as an RF tag, bar
code, or database field.”
The EPC standard further defines identity URI as “a representation of a pure identity
as a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). A URI is a character string representation
that is commonly used to exchange identity data between software components of a
larger system.”
The standard URI representation of EPCs has four categories:
■ URIs for pure identities (also called canonical forms), which contain only the EPC
fields to identify a physical object. For example, a pure identity URI for GID can
be “urn:epc:id:gid:10.1002.2”. A URI for GRAI can be
“urn:epc:id:grai:0652642.12345.1234.”
■ URIs for EPC tags, which represent the tag encodings. These URIs can be used by
application software to write a tag. An example for a serialized GTIN 64-bit
encoding is “urn:epc:tag:sgtin-64:3.0652642. 800031.400.”
■ URIs for raw bit strings, which represent invalid bit-level patterns as a single
decimal number. For example: “urn:epc:raw:64.20018283527919.”