Preface Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the Canadian Advisory Committee (CAC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T). At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 15961:2004 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC. Scope The data protocol used to exchange information in an RFID system for item management is specified in this International Standard and in ISO/IEC 15962. Both International Standards are required for a complete understanding of the data protocol in its entirety; but each focuses on one particular interface: This International Standard addresses the information interface with the application system. ISO/IEC 15962 deals with the processing of data and its presentation to the RF tag, and the initial processing of data captured from the RF tag. This International Standard focuses on the interface between the application and the data protocol processor, and includes the specification of the transfer syntax and definition of application commands and responses. It allows data and commands to be specified in a standardised way, independent of the particular air interface of ISO/IEC 18000. This International Standard provides guidelines on how data shall be presented as objects; defines the structure of object identifiers, based on ISO/IEC 9834-1; specifies the commands that are supported for transferring data between the application and the RF tag; specifies the responses that are supported for transferring data between the RF tag and the application; provides a formal description of all the processes using ASN.1, as specified in ISO/IEC 8824-1; specifies the transfer syntax, based on the Basic Encoding Rules of ISO/IEC 8825-1, for data to be transferred from and to the application. It is expected that this International Standard will be used as a reference to develop software appropriate for particular applications, or for particular RF equipment. NOTE: Conventionally in International Standards, long numbers are separated by a space character as a \"thousands separator\". This convention has not been followed in this International Standard, because the arcs of an object identifier are defined by a space separator (according to ISO/IEC 8824 and ISO/IEC 8825). As the correct representation of these arcs is vital to this International Standard, all numeric values have no space separators except to denote a node between two arcs of an object identifier.