Coordinating Mobile Databases

We are interested in the development of a database management layer which is completely portable and, therefore, “pluggable” on top of multiple host platforms. This layer, so called Peer Database Management System (PDBMS), must be able to remotely connect with its database and to connect it with other peer databases. We realize mobility by storing PDBMS on a flash drive. We realize network independence by developing a fully decentralized data coordination model. The two notions at the core of our model are Interest groups and Acquaintances. The first notion allows for a global aggregation of nodes carrying similar information, while the second allows for a local logical point-to-point data exchange between databases. The system has been developed on top of the Peer-to-Peer platform JXTA.