Towards Traceability across Sovereign, Distributed RFID Databases

  • Authors:
  • Rakesh Agrawal;Alvin Cheung;Karin Kailing;Stefan Schonauer

  • Affiliations:
  • Microsoft Search Labs, Mountain View, CA;IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA;IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA;IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA

  • Venue:
  • IDEAS '06 Proceedings of the 10th International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Tracking and tracing individual items is a new and emerging trend in many industries. Driven by matur- ing technologies such as Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and upcoming standards such as the Electronic Product Code (EPC), a rapidly increasing number of enter- prises are collecting vast amounts of tracking data. To en- able traceability over the entire life-cycle of items data has to be shared across independent and possibly competing en- terprises. The need to simultaneously compete and cooper- ate requires a traceability system design that allows compa- nies to share their traceability data while maintaining com- plete sovereignty over what is shared and with whom. Based on an extensive study of traceability applications, we introduce the formal concept of traceability networks and highlight the technical challenges involved in shar- ing data in such a network. To address these challenges, we present an innovative combination of query process- ing techniques from P2P networks and distributed as well as parallel databases with confidentiality enforcement tech- niques.