ALE Server Features

Below is a full list of ALE Server's features.

• Compliance

  ALE Server is fully compliant with EPCglobal's ALE Specification and is fully interoperable with the other components of the EPCglobal Network including EPCglobal's Tag Data Standards.

  Supported Tag Encodings:
  
  • GID-96
  • SGTIN-96
  • SGTIN-198
  • SSCC-96
  • SGLN-96
  • SGLN-195
  • GRAI-170
  • GIAI-96
  • GIAI-202
  • DoD
  • Raw Hexadecimal and Decimal Formats

• Integration

  ALE Server comes with built in hardware simulation allowing you to perform a full pilot without needing to spend a single penny. This "Test Reader" allows you to simulate the usage of EPCglobal GID-96 tags using your EPCglobal assigned General Manager number and internally assigned object class.

  Supported Readers:
  
  • Alien 9-Series Readers
  • Intermec IF5
  • Symbol XR400
  • Feig LRU1000
  • ThingMagic Mercury M4/M5
  • Brooks HF60

  ALE Server allows your existing business systems to "subscribe" to RFID data that ALE Server collects. Interested systems can tell ALE Server exactly what RFID tags they're interested in and how they want the data grouped and summarized. All of this communication is done using standardized Web-services via "SOAP" messages, making ALE Server completely SOA compatible.

  After collecting, filtering tag data from RFID readers, ALE Server "publishes" RFID data to your business systems using common IT protocols.

  Supported Notification Transports:
  
  • HTTP: RFID EC Reports can be sent to a website.
  • FTP: RFID EC Reports can be sent to a remote file server.
  • SMTP: RFID EC Reports can be e-mailed to any e-mail address.
  • File: RFID EC Reports can be written to a file on the server.
  • TCP: RFID EC Reports can be sent to any remote server over the intranet or internet.
  • JDBC: RFID EC Reports can be written to any JDBC compliant database including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL and HSQLDB.
  • JMS: RFID EC Reports can be sent to an Open JMS topic or queue for distribution to many systems at once.
  • SOAP: RFID EC Reports can be sent to a subscribers via SOAP web-services.

  ALE Server also includes an extensible plug-in framework enabling you to connect ALE Server to virtually any device or system in the world. Included with ALE Server are sample plug-ins demonstrating just how easy it is to develop and deploy a plug-in.

• Administration

  ALE Server comes with a web-based administration console that's simple and easy to use. The administration console can configure every aspect of ALE Server and requires no special IT skills, only a basic understanding of Event Cycle Specifications and Reports.

• Performance & System Requirements

  ALE Server's engine can run efficiently with limited resources yet scales well in demanding, high performance situations. ALE Server can run on as little as 5MB of memory, but has been tested to handle well over 100,000 tags per second on a server with 4x2.2 GHz CPUs and 512 MB of memory. CPU utilization in these situations is amazingly low*, with most performance factors bound to memory availability.

  Recommended system requirements for ALE Server:
  
  • Operating System: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista, Unix/Linux, Mac OSX
  • 256 MB RAM
  • 200 MB Disk
  • 1GHz or faster CPU

  *Many factors can affect ALE Server's performance but typically performance boils down to two critical factors: System Resources and ALE Configuration.