Mobile agents in mobile data access systems

Abstract

The heterogeneity and geographical distribution of data sources in the presence of autonomy make it a very difficult task to provide global information sharing. When adding mobility and wireless medium to this mix (Mobile Data Access System), the constraints on bandwidth, connectivity, and resources worsen the problem. Application of mobile agent technology in a global information-sharing environment releases the global mobile users from the constraints imposed by the wireless medium and mobile devices. This work applies the Mobile Agent technology in a Mobile Data Access System framework (MAMDAS) using the Summary Schemas Model as the underlying multidatabase platform. This approach provides better performance by reducing the network traffic and higher degree of autonomy by allowing agents to execute without the owners interference. As witnessed by our experimental results, the MAMDAS exhibits the following advantages compared to the first SSM prototype: • It is about 6 times faster. • It supports larger number of concurrent queries. • It demonstrates greater scalability, portability, and robustness. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.