Publications

Realising Proactive Behaviour in Mobile Data-Centric Applications

Michael Grossniklaus, Moira C. Norrie and Julian Sgier

UMICS 2007, Workshop on Ubiquitous Mobile Information and Collaboration Systems, Trondheim, Norway, June 2007

June 2007

Abstract

Mobile data-centric applications gather, process and disseminate relevant information to users on the move. The reduced information bandwidth characteristic of mobile platforms and the division of the user's attention over multiple tasks are major challenges in such systems. To compensate for these limitations, most mobile applications propose the use of context information to realise adaptive and proactive behaviour. Although lightweight object-oriented databases have become a popular choice for storing data in mobile systems, they rarely provide event handling facilities sophisticated enough to support proactivity. We present an approach that combines mechanisms introduced by notification systems and modern programming languages with the notion of traditional database triggers. The resulting unified event model has been implemented as an extension of an open-source object storage system and validated in a mobile showcase application to provide customised information services to tourists during their travels.