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data to and receive data from different and changing locations. This results in the
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need for various kinds of proxy solutions, where users are handed off from one proxy
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to another as they move. Protocols must be constructed in such a way as to be able to
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tolerate such handoffs without breaking. Mobility also raises the need for intelligent
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data staging and pre-staging, so that data can be placed close to where the users will
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be when they need it (particularly in slow or unreliable communications situations).
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Secondly, mobility adds location as a new dimension to applications that does not
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typically play a role in stationary scenarios. For example, some of the most useful
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applications for mobile devices are location-centric. Consider a system that can
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answer questions such as find the drugstores within 2 miles of my current location .
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Such a system must track the location of the current user and be able to access
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information based on relative locations and distances. On a broader scale, servers
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may have to track large numbers of moving objects (people, cars, devices, etc.) and be
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able to predict their future locations. For example, an automated traffic control
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system would have to track numerous cars, including their current positions,
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directions, and velocities. Location-centric computing requires special data structures
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in which location information can be encoded and efficiently stored, as well as ones in
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which the dynamic positions of objects can be maintained.
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Requirements Due to Context-Awareness
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Context-awareness imposes significant demands on the knowledge maintained by the
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system and the inferencing algorithms that use that knowledge. In order to be context
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aware, a system must maintain an internal representation of users needs, roles, and
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preferences, etc. One example of such a system is a smart calendar that routes
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information to a user based on knowledge of the user s near-term schedule (as can be
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determined from the user s PIM calendar). If, for example, a user has a meeting with
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a particular client scheduled for the afternoon, such a system could send the user
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information that would be highly relevant to that meeting, such as data about the
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client s account, results of previous meetings with that client, news articles relevant to
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the topic of the meeting, etc.
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More sophisticated systems might use various types of sensors to monitor the
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environment and track users actions so as to be able to assist in the tasks the user is
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performing. Such sensor-based systems require the ability to process data streams in
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real-time and to analyze and interpret such streams. Thus, data-flow processing will
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play a key role in ubiquitous computing.
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Whether the system obtains its context information from sensors, user input, PIM
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(personal information management) applications, or some combination of these, it
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must perform a good deal of processing over the data in order to be able to accurately
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assess the state of the environment and the intensions of the user. Thus, context-
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aware applications impose demanding requirements for inferencing and machine
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learning techniques. These processes will have to cope with incomplete and
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conflicting data, and will have to do so extremely efficiently in order to be able to
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interact with the user in a useful and unobtrusive manner.
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Requirements Due to Collaboration
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The final set of requirements we discuss here are those that result from the need to
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support collaborative work by dynamic and sometimes ad hoc groups of people. As
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stated above, a prime requirement that stems from such applications is adaptivity. In
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addition, however, there are several other types of support that are required beyond
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what has already been discussed. First, there is a need for synchronization and
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consistency support. At the center of any collaborative application is a set of shared
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data items that ean be created, accessed, modified, and deleted by participants of the
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collaboration. This coordination function must be lightweight and flexible so that
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many different types of interactions can be supported, ranging from unmoderated chat
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facilities, to full ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable) transactions, as
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provided by traditional database systems.
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A second requirement stemming from collaborative applications is the need for
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reliable and available storage of history. In particular, if the collaboration is to be
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performed in an asynchronous manner, users must be able to access a record of what
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has happened earlier in the collaboration. Likewise, if the participants in the
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collaboration can change over time (e.g., due to mobility, failures, or simply due to
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the nature of the collaboration), then a durable record of participants and their actions
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is essential to allow new members to join and come up to speed. Such durable storage
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is also useful for keeping a log of activity, that can be used later to trace through the
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causes of various outcomes of the collaboration, or as input into learning and data
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mining algorithms whieh may help optimize future collaborations.
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Example Data Management Technologies n On-Going Projects
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The preceding discussion addressed some of the data management challenges that
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must be addressed to support ubiquitous computing scenarios and outlined the
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application properties from which they arise. In this section, we briefly describe two
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on going projects that are addressing some of these aspects. The first project, called
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Data Recharging, exploits user interest and preference information to deliver data
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updates and other relevant items to users on their portable devices. The second
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project, called Telegraph, is building an adaptive data-flow processing architecture to
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process long-running queries over variable streams of data, as would arise in sensor-
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based and other highly dynamic data environments.
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Challenges in Ubiquitous Data Management
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Data Recharging: Profile-Based Data Dissemination and Synchronization
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Mobile devices require two key resources to function: power and data. The mobile
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nature of such devices combined with limitations of size and cost makes it impractical
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to keep them continually connected to the fixed power and data (i.e., the Internet)
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grids. Mobile devices cope with disconnection from these grids by "caching".
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Devices use rechargeable batteries for caching power, while local storage is used for
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caching data. Periodically, the device-local local resources must be "recharged" by
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connecting with the fixed power and data grids. With existing technology, however,
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the process of recharging the device resident data is much more cumbersome and
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error-prone than recharging the power. Power recharging can be done virtually
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anywhere in the world, requires little user involvement, and works progressively -
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the longer the device is recharged, the better the device-stored power becomes. In
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