Federated Spatial Cursors

Abstract. The usage of small mobile devices for data-intensive applications becomes more and more self-evident. As a consequence we have to consider these devices and their inherent characteristics in future system designs, like the limitations of memory and communication bandwidth. For example, when querying data servers for information, a mobile application can hardly anticipate the size of the result set. Our approach is to give more control over the data delivery process to the application, so that it can be adapted regarding its device status, the costs and availability of communication channels, and the user’s needs. This paper introduces a flexible and scalable approach by providing spatially federated cursor functionality. It is based on an open federation over a set of loosely coupled data sources that provide simple object retrieval interfaces. 1