◆ Semantic Web Catalogue

Tradition

Commerce and supply chain

Identifying, describing and tracking goods as they are made, shipped and sold: barcodes and product numbers, electronic data interchange between businesses, RFID, and product data on the Web.

also
Retail, Logistics, E-commerce, Supply chain
scheme
traditions

Where it answered

This tradition's column of the issues map: which questions its works mainly answer, and the earliest of each.

issueworksearliest
Technical 8 works · 67%
Identification 6 Barcode 1949
Linking
Data model 1 EPCIS 2007
Serialization 1 UN/EDIFACT 1987
Reasoning
Query & validation
Scale & performance
Bridge 3 works · 25%
Vocabulary 3 GoodRelations 2008
Human 1 work · 8%
Topology
Trust
Governance 1 Digital Product Passport 2024
Adoption & incentives
Sustainability
Usability

Shares works with Web standards (4) · Search (1)

Counts use each work's main design issue, as on the full map; 12 works in all.

Timeline

Everything from this tradition, in lanes by type. Bars run from start to end where both are known; marks people, projects and organizations still active. 4 entries have no date and are not shown. Hover over or focus an entry to draw its links. Scroll sideways, or use the decades above.

Entries (21)

Concepts 2

  • Barcode 1949 concept technique

    A machine-readable pattern of lines that encodes a number, patented by Woodland and Silver in 1952 and put on groceries from 1974; it gave everyday objects identifiers that machines could read.

  • Internet of Things 1999 concept vision

    Physical objects that identify themselves and report data over networks without people typing it in; the term was coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999 about RFID in supply chains.

Writings 1

Standards 8

  • Universal Product Code 1973 standard ★ seminal

    The US grocery industry's product barcode and numbering standard, chosen on 3 April 1973 from IBM's design; the first scan was a pack of Wrigley's gum in Troy, Ohio, on 26 June 1974.

  • Global Trade Item Number 1977 standard

    GS1's family of product numbers, joining the American UPC with the European Article Number from 1977; it is the number in retail barcodes and the base of the GS1 system.

  • UN/EDIFACT 1987 standard

    The UN's standard messages and syntax for electronic data interchange between businesses, such as orders and invoices, approved as ISO 9735 in 1987 after merging with the American proposals: machine-readable business documents a decade before the Web.

  • EPCIS 2007 standard

    GS1 standard, first ratified in April 2007, for sharing events in a product's journey through supply chains: what was seen, when, where and why. Version 2.0 (June 2022) added JSON-LD, a REST API and GS1 Digital Link URIs.

  • GoodRelations 2008 standard

    Martin Hepp's web vocabulary for products, prices and offers, adopted by Google, Yahoo, Bing and retailers such as Best Buy, and merged into schema.org in November 2012 as its commerce vocabulary.

  • GS1 Digital Link 2018 standard ★ seminal

    GS1 standard for writing product identifiers such as GTINs as web URIs, so that a barcode or QR code on a pack resolves to information about the product; ratified in August 2018. It puts Linked Data identifiers on everyday goods.

  • Electronic Product Code standard

    Identifier for each individual physical object, not just each product type, designed to be carried on RFID tags; it came out of MIT's Auto-ID Center and is maintained by GS1.

  • GS1 Web Vocabulary standard

    GS1's terms for products, organisations and locations published as Linked Data and designed as an extension to schema.org.

Projects 1

  • Digital Product Passport 2024 project

    EU scheme under the 2024 Ecodesign Regulation giving products a digital record of what they are made of and how to repair and recycle them, reached through a QR code; batteries are first, from February 2027, and an EU registry opened in July 2026.

Organizations 4

  • GS1 1974 organization

    Not-for-profit organisation, begun in 1974 as the Uniform Code Council and joined by the European Article Numbering Association, that maintains the barcode numbering standards used on retail products worldwide, and the GS1 Web Vocabulary and GS1 Digital Link that carry them onto the Web.

  • Amazon 1994 organization

    American online retailer and cloud provider, founded in 1994; it has owned IMDb since 1998.

  • Auto-ID Center 1999 organization

    Industry-sponsored research centre at MIT, opened in 1999, that designed a system of RFID tags and product numbers for tracking goods; MIT licensed the system to GS1.

  • UN/CEFACT organization

    UN body, under the Economic Commission for Europe, that maintains EDIFACT and other standards for trade documents and electronic business.

People 5

  • Norman Joseph Woodland 1921–2012 person

    American engineer who, with Bernard Silver, patented the barcode in 1952.

  • Bernard Silver 1924–1963 person

    American engineer who heard a grocery executive ask for a way to read product data at checkout, and with Norman Woodland filed the barcode patent in 1949.

  • George Laurer 1925–2019 person

    IBM engineer whose linear barcode design was chosen in 1973 as the Universal Product Code.

  • Kevin Ashton b. 1968 person

    British technologist who, while at Procter & Gamble, coined the term 'Internet of Things' in 1999 and helped start MIT's Auto-ID Center, becoming its executive director.

  • Martin Hepp person

    German researcher in e-business who created the GoodRelations vocabulary for products and offers, which became schema.org's commerce vocabulary in 2012.