Difference between revisions of "Best Practice for Designing a Rifidi APP"

Latest revision as of 18:45, 5 September 2014

Here is an overview on the best practices for How to Approach designing a Rifidi Application

The Goal

First ask your self what is the goal of the application such as automation of a business process, increased productivity/efficiency, tracability of an asset, security, visibility into the supply chain etc..

Problems to be solved

Once you have a clearer understanding of the Goal then ask your self what problems are you looking to solve such as Asset Tracking, Inventory Control, Inventory Management, Automation of a business process through sensors/RFID, Work in Progress (WIP). Defnitions of these can be found in the business solutions offered by Transcends using the Rifidi Platform Transcends Sensor Business Solutions

Setup

• Ensure you have setup your Rifidi development environment - Edge_Server_Development_Environment

Design

• Design Framework Overview

• • Application properties are used to set Global (for a application group) and Application specific prioperties such as timeouts, database connection strings etc..
  • Applications use reader zones - Defined in readzone - proeprties file
  • Read zone properties map to one to many readers in rifidi.xml
  • Readers in defined rifidi.xml (or using workbench UI) map to the physical reader/sensor(s)

• What Hardware (readers and sensors) are you looking to use?
  • Do these sensors come out of the box with Rifidi? (LLRP, Motorola, Impinj, Alien, ThingMagic, CSL, Thinkify, any handheld vis Generic Reader Adapter, Opticon Bar Code)
    • Yes - Follow the user's guide User's_Guide and/or quick start guide the sensor/reader adapter can be configured to start reading
    • No - One can be developed using the Sensor API - How_to_create_a_sensor_plugin - Also refer to existing sensor adapter source code as examples
• The Application Design - Basically a Rifidi APP has access to any configured sensor/reader
  • 1 What are you integrating with? (Such as MySQL database, Messaging Queue, ERP/CRM system via WebServices, Cloud/AWS)
    • Example Jumpstart Rifidi Applications for those integrations mentioned can be found here Rifidi APP Jumpstarts
  • 2 Are there any library's being used NOT included by default in Rifidi? (such as database drivers (MYSQL is provided by default), cloud drivers etc..) How to Add Third_Party_Libraries
  • 3 What are the sensor business rules such as asset have arrived/departed, a group of tags have been identified, which asset is seen based on signal (RSSI) strength - An example application for capturing which a asset arrived can be found in the HelloWorld Application.
    • Are the business rules out of the box via Rifidi Services?
    • Yes - A list of out of the box Rifidi Services addressing these design challenges can be found in the [[Developer's_Guide | Developer's guide] or Rifidi_Services_Jumpstart
    • No - A custom business rule can be developed using Esper (Esper is a trademark of EsperTech Inc) An example of custom Esper to create a work in progress business rule can be found in the Northwind Example Application - Note: A more advanced topic once familiar with developing a basic application such as HelloWorld Application.
  • 4 Define the read zones required - This defines the relations the readers/sensors have to each other within the application such as 1 to 1 relationship, 1 to many, many to 1 (Note The readzone configurations also support regular expressions in the event you use a naming convention when defining read adapters to potentially represent relationships - How to define readzones can be found in the Developer's guide Note: The serviceid for a given reader factory adapter instance in the rifidi.xml is used to map to a readerID in teh readzone property files

• • 5 Are there any application properties required? Such as database parameters, Queue Names, Webservice Endpoints/URL, Rifidi services parameters (timeouts, thresholds) -Note: All teh Rifidi Jumpstart Applications provide examples on how these are defined and used within an application

Other Topics (Monitoring/Logging/Management/Deployment)

• Is there a need to Dynamically/Remotely manage the Edge Server such as stopping/starting sessions, configuring sensors, managing applications etc.. A list of how to use these Edge management services can be found Edge Management
• Is there a need to Monitor the Edge Server such as JVM, Configured Readers/Sensors, OSGI, Applications (anything exposed via JMX). A list of how to use these Edge management services can be found Edge Monitoring
• Any additional logging needs can be configured here Rifidi Logging Configuration
• Any changes to Edger Server configuration such as changing default port, RMI, production mode Edge_Server_Configuration
• Are there any OSGI Bundles you need to add to Edge Server required by your application? such as the Oracle database driver How_to_add_OSGI_Bundles
• Performance Tuning Tips Performance_Tuning_Tips
• Complete steps to export and deploy a app you designed/developed How_to_export_your_custom_Rifidi_application