Efficient and effective RFID data warehousing

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) applications are emerging as key components in object tracking and supply chain management systems since in the next future almost every major retailer will use RFID systems to track the shipment of products from suppliers to warehouses. Due to the streaming nature of RFID readings, large amounts of data are generated by these devices at high production rates. This phenomenon is even more relevant since RFIDs are so cheap that every individual item can be tagged thus leaving a "trail" of data as it moves across different locations. This scenario raises new challenges in effectively and efficiently exploiting such large amounts of data. In this paper we address the problem of compressing RFID data in order to enable devices with limited amount of available memory (such as PDAs) to issue queries on RFID warehouses. In particular, we designed a lossy strategy for collapsing tuples carrying information about items being delivered at different location of the supply chain. Copyright 2009 ACM.