Convergent Software Limited has announced the release of the industry's first diagnostic tool to test the compliance of RFID encoded data. It consists of two modules intended to help end-users in the air transportation sector with project planning and analysis of RFID tags:

• Encoding Simulator
• Diagnostic Tool

The encoding simulator is compliant with IATA's RP1740C RFID standard for baggage handling. It enables airlines, airports and project managers to simulate the encoding of RFID tags. The memory capacity can be adjusted to candidate tag products and real baggage handling data is encoded to produce the byte stream to be encoded in the RFID tag. The simulator allows the user to select the optional data elements and rank them into a priority sequence. This particular feature is useful because a number of fields are variable length and the simulator encodes the most important fields up to the capacity of the selected memory.

The diagnostic tool ensures that data is properly encoded on the tag in a compliant manner with an application standard. Its major feature is that it identifies potential encoding errors in the following features:

• Data validation to be compliant with the application standard
• Data compaction
• Encoding of data formats and object identifiers
• Syntax to be compliant with the ISO/IEC 15962 encoding rules
• Whether a sub-optimum compaction scheme has been used

The software produces HTML reports showing the results of encoding and decoding. The error reports from the diagnostic tool provide an electronic record of the errors found so that these reports can be exchanged between the airport and airline implementing the RFID data capture application and the organisation responsible for creating the error.

Who is Covergent Software? For those of you have been reading my articles in IT-Analysis, you may remember an interview with Paul Chartier, Project Editor of ISO/IEC 15961 and ISO/IEC 15962 at the end of October 2007. Well, Chartier is the Managing Director of Convergent Software Limited, whose principals have over 30 years experience with AIDC technology and computing. Convergent Software is currently working with partners on developing encoding simulators, diagnostic software and component tool sets for RFID systems.

Convergent Software looks set to become an important niche player in the RFID market. The experience Chartier and his colleagues have in the industry looks set to making Convergent Software a company to watch.