IBM Offers Developers a Free RFID Education

Published: August 8, 2006

by Alex Woodie

While radio frequency identification (RFID) technology definitely has a place in the next-generation supply chain, there are some hurdles to implementing RFID in the meantime, including a shortage of RFID skills, according to IBM. To address this RFID skills gap, IBM last week published a collection of free tools to help its customers determine where and how to use RFID.

The RFID skills gap could spell trouble at many organizations facing RFID mandates from supply chain partners, according to David Sommer, a vice president with The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), an IT trade group with ties to IBM. "We conducted a survey of solution providers, consultants, system integrators, and end-users of RFID technology earlier this year and found that RFID deployments continue to be hampered by a shortage of individuals skilled in the technology."

To fight this skills shortage, IBM is putting into the public domain three new RFID tools, including the RFID Integrated Solution Enablement (RISE), the RFID Device Development Kit, and the Application Level Events (ALE) Preview for RFID. Each of these tools is available for download free of charge from IBM's alphaWorks Web site.

RISE, which was developed by IBM researchers in the IBM Watson Research Center and in the IBM Korea Ubiquitous Computing Lab, enables developers to draw models of potential RFID solution implementations using pre-built components, test them against specific behaviors and variables, and then tie them to the specific devices and platforms for deployment, IBM says.

IBM bills the new RFID Device Development Kit as an "educational toolkit" for developers and students. The toolkit includes more than 300 RFID-specific resources, including technical articles, tutorials, and other information from IBM's developerWorks Web site.

The ALE Preview for RFID, meanwhile, is designed to help developers build RFID capabilities into their applications. The software helps programmers create applications that read events from RFID devices and then display the event notices in a Web browser.

For downloads and more information on these tools, go to www.alphaworks.ibm.com/topics/rfid.