The strong growth in wireless communications and the ever increasing availability of mobile multi-purpose devices have created a global computing environment that plays a key role in the daily activities of millions of people. Users communicate, work, and confer using a wide range of devices all connected via an array of communication networks that provide voice and data access regardless of geographic position.
This infrastructure aggregation presents a number of challenges especially when it comes to data-intensive applications: scale, variable and intermittent connectivity, provision of location-dependent applications, bandwidth/power consumption, device size limitations, and multimedia delivery across hybrid networks.
Conventional issues in data management have to be thought and evaluated anew in this rapidly changing environment. Non-traditional issues including semantics of data, location-centric data services, broadcast and multicast delivery, data availability techniques, security of data, as well as privacy questions have to be addressed. MDM'06 focuses on challenges and opportunities for data management and access technology in the evolving world of mobile, wearable, and pervasive computing.
