Mobile Intelligence

4.6 SUMMARY

Mobile applications increasingly make use of network connectivity to provide enhanced services such as multiplayer games, mobile payment applications, and location-based services. The constraints of mobile devices, especially in terms of limited or unreliable network connections, the large volumes of data that need to be processed, and the complex interactions exhibited by some mobile applications require a communication infrastructure that addresses the requirements of these applications and platforms.

The publish/subscribe messaging paradigm provides a simple yet powerful abstraction that decouples the communication between providers and consumers of data. This decoupling is especially of benefit in mobile applications by hiding intermitted disconnections by mobile devices from the applications. Also, the powerful filtering capabilities provided by the model allow applications to receive only those messages of interest to them over the often expensive and limited wireless channel available to mobile devices. Furthermore, content-based publish/subscribe routing allows applications to devise sophisticated interactions in which applications can address devices using, among other ways, location-independent or location-dependent addresses in a unified manner. In addition to the benefits of the publish/subscribe model, distributed publish/subscribe systems have been shown to be scalable and algorithms exist to handle the stresses of a highly dynamic mobile environment. ...