Mobile Database Systems

The field of research of Mobile Computing is based on the invention and commercialization of the first wearable computer by Adam Osborn in April 1981. The developed computer is not comparable to today's mobile computers, which can be bought even in supermarkets. The suitcase-sized computer and its included 5-inch monitor weights about 12kg and consists of two Z80-processors CP/M and two floppy-drives. However the computer set new standards in the are of mobile computers.

Today mobile devices vary from subnotebooks, PDAs, smartphones and wearables to smartcards, which communicate by wireless networks. Mobile devices have become more powerful thus they are able to run complex applications and store data, which results in the need of databases and information systems. Mobile information systems provide the possibilities to move applications from many areas, e.g. health, resource-management or navigation, from hard-wired devices to the mobile world. However, the area of mobile devices raises many new research areas, which deal with the coordination of mobile components in highly distributed and dynamically changing information-spaces.

Mobile database systems have to be adapted to the limited resources of current mobile devices. They are small-footprint databases, which use special replication and synchronization algorithms for the communication (up and download) with a centralized, consolidated and hard-wired database.

In this project the different architecture and implementation aspects of mobile database systems, replication and synchronization methods, location based services and mobile applications are analysed and extended.