The Handbook of Mobile Middleware provides an exhaustive overview of recent developments in the various fields related to how software supports mobile computing. This advanced reference authored by internationally recognized experts integrates the valuable insight gained from actual deployments into a full compendium. It begins by presenting mobile middleware motivations, requirements, and technologies, then offers a taxonomy of solutions organized on the basis of their goals: mobility/disconnection handling; location-based support; and context-based support. This volume focuses on the application domains in which mobile middleware has demonstrated its feasibility and effectiveness, detailing the pros, cons, and trade-offs of these emerging solutions.
Because device miniaturization and wireless communications are making it more feasible to use mobility-enhanced services to exploit all potential and all the opportunities of mobile computing, the ultimate goal of mobility scenarios is becoming the realization of ubiquitous, pervasive, and eventually disappearing computing — in other words, the seamless and transparent collaboration of wireless devices with most human activities without the need for explicit user or administration intervention. This vision, however, introduces novel challenges for the support infrastructure that require novel middleware solutions capable of addressing connectivity-level, location-dependent, and contextdependent support issues, all of which are crucial for advanced adaptive services for mobile environments.
The purpose of this advanced reference book is to provide an exhaustive overview of the work done in recent years in very different fields related to software support of mobile computing. The goal is to present some relevant results obtained and lessons learned in a single compendium that adopts the original and comprehensive perspective of developing and deploying mobile middleware. The book begins by presenting mobile middleware motivations, requirements, and technologies; it then proposes a taxonomy of solutions found in the literature and organized on the basis of their increasingly complex goals (mobility and disconnection handling, location-based support, and context-based support). In addition, the book pays particular attention to the variety of application domains in which mobile middleware is demonstrating its feasibility and effectiveness and shows by example the pros, cons, and tradeoffs of the emerging mobile middleware solutions.