Sharing mobile databases in dynamically configurable environments

Abstract

In an environment with support for mobile computing, we may have a collection of autonomous, distributed, heterogeneous and mobile databases, denoted Mobile Database Community (MDBC), in which each database user can access databases in the community through a wireless communication infrastructure. In such an environment, new participants may join to an MDBC as they move within communication range of one or more hosts which are members of the MDBC. Furthermore, MDBC participants may transiently disconnect from the network due to communication disruptions or to save power. Therefore, an MDBC can be characterized as a dynamically configurable environment. This paper describes an agent-based architecture, denoted AMDB (Accessing Mobile Databases), which enables such communities to be formed opportunistically over mobile database hosts in ad hoc configurable environments. The AMDB architecture is fully distributed and has the capability of exploiting physical mobility of hosts and logical mobility of database queries and their results across mobile hosts. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.