XML-aware data synchronization for mobile devices
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Doctoral thesis (article-based)
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Author
Date
2009
Department
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Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
Verkkokirja (1654 KB, 80 s.)
Series
TKK dissertations,
202
Abstract
In everyday life, and when using computer systems in particular, it is sometimes the case that a logical datum is replicated into multiple copies, such as when we send a document by electronic mail, or inform interested parties of a new address of residence. If the datum for some reason changes, we would then also like the changes to be reflected in the copies. The problem of keeping the copies up-to-date with respect to each other is studied under the heading of data synchronization. In this thesis, we address data synchronization for mobile devices with limited energy resources and limited connectivity to the Internet, such as mobile phones. The importance of data synchronization is emphasized here, as it becomes infeasible to communicate continuously and in high volumes about the current state of each copy. The established conventions of the Internet and mobile computing environments on such matters as storage interfaces and data formats define an overall system architecture, into which we as seamlessly as possible want to incorporate our proposal. By focusing on interoperability we lower the threshold for utilizing our research in practice. We present a comprehensive approach to data synchronization for mobile devices that is optimistic and state-based, and which targets opaque and XML files on a standard file system. We consider how to use the available connectivity in an economical manner, and so that existing sources of data on the Internet can be utilized. We focus on XML synchronization, where we identify an opportunity to utilize the structure of the data the format exposes. Specifically, we present an algorithm for merging concurrent changes to XML documents which supports subtree moves, an efficient heuristic algorithm for computing tree-level changes between two XML documents, and an overall architecture and algorithms to support the use of lazily instantiated XML documents. Our data synchronization approach is evaluated quantitatively in several experiments, as well as qualitatively by constructing applications that build on top of the approach. One of our applications is an editor that processes 1 GB XML files on a mobile phone.Description
Keywords
mobile computing, data synchronization, XML
Other note
Parts
- [Publication 1]: Tancred Lindholm. 2004. A three-way merge for XML documents. In: Jean-Yves Vion-Dury (editor). Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (DocEng 2004). Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. 28-30 October 2004. New York, NY, USA. ACM Press, pages 1-10. ISBN 1-58113-938-1. © 2004 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). By permission.
- [Publication 2]: Tancred Lindholm, Jaakko Kangasharju, and Sasu Tarkoma. 2005. A hybrid approach to optimistic file system directory tree synchronization. In: Ugur Cetintemel and Alexandros Labrinidis (editors). Proceedings of the Fourth ACM International Workshop on Data Engineering for Wireless and Mobile Access (MobiDE 2005). Baltimore, Maryland, USA. 12 June 2005. New York, NY, USA. ACM Press, pages 49-56. ISBN 1-59593-088-4. © 2005 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). By permission.
- [Publication 3]: Tancred Lindholm, Jaakko Kangasharju, and Sasu Tarkoma. 2006. Fast and simple XML tree differencing by sequence alignment. In: David F. Brailsford (editor). Proceedings of the 2006 ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (DocEng 2006). Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 10-13 October 2006. New York, NY, USA. ACM Press, pages 75-84. ISBN 1-59593-515-0. © 2006 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). By permission.
- [Publication 4]: Tancred Lindholm and Jaakko Kangasharju. 2008. How to edit gigabyte XML files on a mobile phone with XAS, RefTrees, and RAXS. In: Vinny Cahill (editor). Proceedings of the 5th Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services (MobiQuitous 2008). Dublin, Ireland. 21-25 July 2008. Brussels, Belgium. Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering. Article No. 50. 10 pages. ISBN 978-963-9799-27-1. © 2008 by authors and © 2008 Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering (ICST). By permission.
- [Publication 5]: Tancred Lindholm, Jaakko Kangasharju, and Sasu Tarkoma. 2009. Syxaw: Data synchronization middleware for the mobile web. Mobile Networks and Applications, volume 14, number 5, pages 661-676.