An Object-Oriented Database-based Architecture for Mobile Enterprise Applications

Abstract

Emerging wireless infrastructure such as WiFi and Bluetooth networks make possible mobile applications that allow employees to carry out business computing tasks while not at a fixed computer and while at varying locations. One particular mobile enterprise use-case involves a worker such as a consultant who is visiting multiple branches of the same enterprise or visiting multiple enterprises and who needs to access electronic business records at each of these locations. Business records can be large and have a complex structure making their access from a mobile device somewhat intractable given device and bandwidth limitations. In this paper we propose an object-oriented database-based architecture for mobile enterprise applications that uses the object-oriented schema of the data itself to autogenerate an interface for accessing business records incrementally on mobile devices. This architecture hence provides a way to access large business records from mobile devices by natively supporting incremental retrieval and accessing of the records.