IDTree: Concise Hierarchical Data Representation for Resource-Constrained Smart Objects

For Smart Object (SO) in Internet of Everything, especially for barcode and RFID tags in supply Chains, the interoperability, scalability and high efficiency is critical to store and exchange semi-structured data among SOs. However, current methods either are too heavy-weight, or cannot represent hierarchical data model flexibly on demand, and they cannot meet the requirement of resource-constrained SOs. This paper presents a byte-aligned concise IDTree method to represent hierarchical data based on metadata identifiers, with ID-Value associations and specific nonprinting characters to control data structure, for resource-constrained SOs. After introducing the overview of IDTree method, the paper presents the representations for two types of node-data, then represent tree-like structure with generalized list method. Finally, a practical hierarchical data example is given to illustrate the method in detail.