MOBILE AGENTS FOR DATABASE APPLICATIONS
Ludwig Klug
Software Competence Center Hagenberg
Austria
Abstract
Most current applications and databases are designed with traditional
computing environments in mind, in which applications are located
on several servers with access to each other via Internet. However,
companies are increasingly turning to federated information
bases, which, unlike homogenous databases, are typically characterized
by incompatible database management systems, schemata and frequently
changing context. Thus, the next generation of information bases
will need to take into account the requirements of heterogeneous
and federated computing. They will need to be able to respond
to companies changing information requirements and flexibility
of network topologies. Moreover, they will be required to provide
services that exploit an awareness of currently available information
bases, as well as other aspects of context, such as location
to enforce location-based security. In order to meet these requirements,
federated information bases must be capable of dynamically adapting
to their environments. Currently available database management
systems provide very little support for adaptation. Typically,
they permit some types of replication and distributed database
schema, which allow load balancing and redundancy to ensure
availability. However, they do not support dynamic reconfiguration
to environmental changes.
Biography
Ludwig Klug (ludwig.klug@scch.at) is a member of the scientific
staff at the Software Competence Center Hagenberg. Having graduated
from the polytechnical university Hagenberg, he currently works
on a research project (DBagents) that investigates the applicability
of agent technology for distributed databases.
