Profile driven data management for pervasive environments

Abstract

The past few years have seen significant work in mobile data management, typically based on the client/proxy/server model. Mobile/wireless devices are treated as clients that are data consumers only, while data sources are on servers that typically reside on the wired network. With the advent of “pervasive computing” environments an alternative scenario arises where mobile devices gather and exchange data from not just wired sources, but also from their ethereal environment and one another. This is accomplished usingad-hoc connectivity engendered by Bluetooth like systems. In this new scenario, mobile devices become both data consumers and producers.We describe the new data management challenges which this scenario introduces. We describe the design and present an implementation prototype of our framework, MoGATU, which addresses these challenges. An important component of our approach is to treat each device as an autonomous entity with its “goals” and “beliefs”, expressed using a semantically rich language. We have implemented this framework over a combined Bluetooth and Ad-Hoc 802.11 network with clients runningon a variety of mobile devices. We present experimental results validatingour approach and measure system performance.