This module offers an additional, RESTful, integration interface, or API (Application Programming Interface) for the EPCIS upon which a different range of applications can be built thanks to a lightweight and Web-enabled RESTful architecture. It offers access to all standard EPCIS functionality through a native Web interface.
Using the EPCIS Webadapter:
Please note that the EPCIS Webadapter is not an EPCglobal standardized interface and currently is still a beta Fosstrak module.
Detailed information about this module and how to use it can be found in the EPCIS Webadapter guide
The WS-* type of integration architecture is well adapted to combine business applications. For example, it can be used to integrate EPCIS data about the status of a shipment with an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application.
However, WS-* applications are complex systems with high entry barriers and require developer expertise in the domain. Hence, they are not well adapted for more light-weight and ad-hoc application scenarios. Furthermore, the WS-* protocols are known to be rather verbose. Moreover, they do not fully meet the requirements of resource-constrained devices such as mobile phones and wireless sensor/actuator networks often not providing WS-* server or even client stacks.
The EPCIS Webadapter is a optional plugin that that offers an additional RESTful interface on top of any standard-compliant EPCIS. Using this approach, each query, tagged object, location or RFID reader gets a unique URL that can be linked to, exchanged in emails, browsed for, bookmarked, and consumed from any scripting or programming language understanding the HTTP protocol.
The EPCIS Webadapter has three main goals:
The module basically translates the incoming RESTful request into SOAP requests on the original EPCIS. It further takes care of reformatting the results into several Web formats such as HTML, JSON, Atom and XML. The plugin is based on Jersey, an implementation of the Java Standard for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS). For generating Atom feeds for query subscriptions, it uses the Apache Abdera framework.
More information about this module can be found in the EPCIS Webadapter guide or in this research paper.