Adaptive Middleware for Uniform Access to Legacy Systems for Mobile Clients
Xiaoli Zhi, Lu Rong, Weiqin Tong · 2006
The trends of mobile accessibility are bringing new challenges to the viability of computerized systems that can't support mobile clients. Taking in instead of ignoring the ever-increasing number of mobile users is important and urgent to save legacy properties and maintain business prosperity. And a uniform access to heterogeneous end hosts is most desirable for computationally challenged mobile devices. To address the above two issues, this paper proposes a mobile adaptive data accessing middleware (MADAM). It uses a non-intrusive way to mobilize legacy systems and offer a consistent accessing interface to mobile users. MADAM provides the adaptability of heterogeneity for both sides. On the client side, a context structure is used to differentiate clients' circumstances. On the server side, a service registration mechanism allows components customized for specific servers to be easily added or removed. MADAM achieves good extensibility and performance by adopting a semi service oriented architecture. Experiments with a prototype implementation show the validity of MADAM