Efficient Supply Chain Visibility Data Sharing With Query Authentication

Visibility data related to product movements are extremely valuable for improving supply chain management efficiency and thwarting counterfeits.However,these data are from heterogeneous sources which are distributed across organizations or even countries,with ever-growing huge volumes,and for various usages.Hence,designing an efficient sharing supply chain visibility data is extremely challenging.Situation becomes much more complex when query results could be manipulated by system participants for gaining extra profits.We propose VeriCS,an efficient supply chain visibility data sharing system that supports query authentication.VeriCS con sists of a blockchain,a query server,supply chain entities,and data users.The query server provides high-level APIs to data users.Upon receiving queries,it issues sub-queries to the blockchain and supply chain entities,aggregates results of sub-queries,and then sends them to data users.Users can verify the correctness of query results.Our major contributions are summarized as follows.(1)We design a hybrid system model for VeriCS.Visibility data are stored on the blockchain and supply chain entities’ local databases.The query server,the blockchain,and supply chain entities’ local databases are all involved in processing users’ queries.The blockchain servers as a trust anchor for the whole system in terms of data storing and query processing.(2)We design a data model for VeriCS with delicate data schemas for the blockchain and each type of supply chain entity.Our data model supports realizing result authentication for typical types of queries in supply chains including basic queries,tracing queries,and analytical queries.Our data model helps to balance data storage and query processing workloads among system participants.(3)We provide example query templates and demonstrate methods to translate these queries into sub-SQL queries that could be processed by the blockchain and supply chain entities’ local databases.Due to security properties of the blockchain,the results of sub-queries from the blockchain are considered trustworthy.Supply chain entities return sub-query results along with verification objects which are computed from authenticated data structures,so that data users can verify the correctness of the results.(4)We implement a prototype of Veri SC and conduct performance evaluations.We construct a small consortium blockchain with Hyperledger Fabric,and implement the query server,supply chain client side,and data user client side.We construct a synthetic data set,and test query and verification performances of 9 queries from three query types.Experimental results show that Veri SC can support typical types of queries in supply chains with high efficiency and low storage costs.