Overview

An EPC identifier may be expressed in a number of representations or encodings, such as BINARY, tag-encoding URI, pure-identity URI, legacy formats. The Fosstrak Tag Data Translation (TDT) Engine provides flexible translation (encoding/decoding) between these different representations of an EPC. For example, our TDT Engine allows a binary string to be converted into a URI representation or vice versa.

The Fosstrak TDT Engine makes use of the XML schema and instance files defined in EPCglobal Tag Data Translation v1.0 and represents a convenient way for Java developers to integrate TDT functionality into their software.

Usage Scenarios

Possible usage scenarios include the following:

• Convert a binary EPC string read from a tag into a tag-encoding URI for use with ALE

• Convert a binary EPC string read from a tag into a pure-identity URI for use with EPCIS

• Convert a binary EPC string into a legacy format (e.g. GTIN + serial number) for use with legacy applications

• Convert an EPC into a hostname, to be looked up in order to perform an ONS query. (N.B. ONS currently only supports SGTIN)

• Convert an EPC into a binary format, for writing an EPC onto a tag