November 27 2006, Melbourne, Australia

Call for Papers

Introduction

Research in ubiquitous computing environments is now turning to novel concepts to address the challenge of providing data and query services. Middleware techniques can make key contributions to these needs. This workshop will address issues of data management in ubiquitous computing environment with a special focus on data processing. It will analyse paradigms for query and data processing that are rooted in the middleware community and may be beneficial in the future of ubiquitous computing.

For those from the middleware research community, the ubiquitous or mobile computing area raises challenges of system and algorithm design: mobile devices or devices in peer-to-peer networks have different properties to static networks. The environment is seen as being more fluid, with increased rate of change of environment, and with components that can vary widely in computing capability, availability and interaction type. Streaming data or event-based data interchange in peer-to-peer networks are only two examples.

Current research often focuses on P2P networks that are extending to ubiquitous environments. Sensor data are captured beyond edge nodes in wide area networks. Initial research in wireless sensor networks often focused on WSN itself. However, in the near future those data will be integrated in Internet environments. At the same time, queries originated in the Internet will be propagated into WSN environments. Data will be stored and shared among different applications over the Internet. Middleware systems will bridge the gap between these two different networks systems.

Aggregating data/events in ubiquitous computing requires management of stateful events. In addition, time in distributed and unreliable environments as well as asynchrony and unstable communication create further challenges. The workshop aims at addressing a global view of data/event correlation, filtering and aggregation over whole distributed systems. One of the goals of the workshop is the definition of key terms of data processing (e.g., aggregation, filtering, correlation, indexing, query, subscription, composition) in the light of different contexts and backgrounds.

In addition, there is no single typical WSN application, and dependency on applications is higher than in traditional distributed applications. The application/middleware layer must provide fundamental services for efficient extraction, manipulation, transport, and representation of information derived from sensor data. Data will be shared by different applications over Internet. This requires the database community to revisit data models, query languages, storage support, query optimization, as well as, data and application services integration. It also requires further interaction with information retrieval, programming languages, artificial intelligence, distributed computing, and workflows.

Aim of the Workshop

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together people from different communities interested in all aspects of data processing in ubiquitous environments. We seek contributions from practitioners in industry and government, as well as from academic and industrial researchers. We specifically seek to encourage cross-fertilizations with related research areas (e.g., such research areas as stream processing, continuous queries, active databases, P2P searching and indexing, wireless networks). We wish to avoid, for example, the database communities and the distributed systems communities independently studying and solving overlapping problems in ubiquitous environments.

We seek a balance between research studies relating to design and implementation of such systems, and presentations of either actual experience with the use of such systems for a real problem, or requirements for future systems to solve projected real problems. Researchers need to make sure they are studying important problems; potential users need to understand the directions in evolving technologies. Since this is a workshop, we encourage position papers and works in progress rather than polished results.

Key goals of the workshop are:
  1. Initiate communication between the different research communities
  2. Develop understanding of the different foci of the communities
  3. Clarify the differing constraints and required functionality in representative applications
  4. Identify mutually agreed research questions within the area
  5. Explore methods of evaluation and comparison
  6. Cross-fertilise the ideas and innovations of the largely disjoint groups

Papers do not have to be based on complete and comprehensive works. In fact, we welcome position papers, requirements for real-world applications, as well as papers based on preliminary results, provided that they are forward-looking and that they remain well-argued and justified in terms of existing work.

Workshop Topics

The goal of this workshop is to share and discuss original and innovative ideas. We intend this workshop to act as an initial forum where people from different areas can find a forum to discuss issues of data management and processing in these new and emerging environments. Therefore, we invite authors from diverse communities that are interested in data processing in ubiquitous environments, such as middleware, distributed systems, ad-hoc and peer-to-peer systems, delay tolerant networks, streaming sensor networks, wireless sensor networks, databases, mobile computing.

Below is a list of possible topics of interest. The list should not be seen as exhaustive. Authors of accepted papers are expected to participate in the workshop.