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and user interface issues.
Conclusions
Ubiquitous computing is a compelling vision for the future that is moving closer to
realization at an accelerating pace. The combination of global wireless and wired
connectivity along with increasingly small and powerful devices enables a wide array
of new applications that will change the nature of computing. Beyond new devices
and communications mechanisms, however, the key technology that is required to
make ubiquitous computing a reality is data management. Data lies at the heart of all
ubiquitous computing applications, but these applications and environments impose
new and challenging requirements for data management technology.
In this short paper, I have tried to outline the key aspects of ubiquitous computing
from a data management perspective. These aspects were organized into three
categories: 1) support for mobility, 2) context-awareness, and 3) support for
collaboration. I then examined each of these to determine a set of requirements that
they impose on data management. The over-riding issue that stems from all of these
is the need for adaptivity. Thus, traditional data management techniques, which tend
to be static and fairly rigid, must be rethought in light of this emerging computing
environment.
I also described two on-going projects that are re-examining key aspects of data
management techniques: the DataRecharging project, which aims to provide data
synchronization and dissemination of highly relevant data for mobile users based on
the processing of sophisticated user profiles; and the Telegraph project, which is
developing a dynamic dataflow processing engine to efficiently and adaptively
process streams of data from a host of sources ranging from web sources to networks
of sensors.
Of course, there are a number of very important data management issues that have
not been touched upon in this short paper. First of all, the ability to interoperate
among multiple applications and types of data will depend on standards for data-
interchange, resource discovery, and inter-object communication. Great strides are
being made in these areas, and the research issues are only a small part of the effort
involved in the standardization process. Another important area, in which on-going
research plays a central role, is the development of global-scale, secure and archival
information storage utilities. An example of such a system is the OceanStore utility,
currently under development at UC Berkeley [KBCC+00].