Utilizing Versions of Views within a Mobile Environment

Data caching and hoarding provide the only means to support disconnected mobile operations. In the context of mobile database applications, data cached can take the form of a materialized view. In this paper, we present a mechanism or view holder within the fixed network, whose job is to maintain versions of the views that are required by a particular mobile host. These views are very likely to be a small and specialized portion of the information found within the various data sources and, therefore, versions can be dynamically maintained by the view holder without incurring huge storage requirements. In addition, the view holder will respond to mobile host’s queries by communicating only the differences between versions. Thus, a view holder mediates and exports the views needed by a mobile host, and updates are computed and delivered in a flexible and batch manner.