Xstream: a middleware for streaming XML contents over wireless environments

XML (extensible Markup Language) has been developed and deployed by domain-specific standardization bodies and commercial companies. Studies have been conducted on a wide variety of issues encompassing XML. In the use of XML for wireless computing, the focus has been on investigating ways to efficiently represent XML data for transmission over a wireless environment. We propose a middleware, Xstream (XML Streaming), for efficiently streaming XML contents over a wireless environment by leveraging the rich semantics and structural characteristics of XML documents and by flexibly managing units containing fragments of data into autonomous units, known as XDU (Xstream Data Unit) fragments. The concept of an XDU is fundamental to the operation of Xstream. It provides for the efficient transfer of documents across a wireless link and allows other issues and challenges pertaining to wireless transmission to be addressed. By fragmenting and organizing an XML document into XDU fragments, we are able to incrementally send fragments across a wireless link, while the receiver is able to perform look-ahead processing of the document without having to wait for the entire document to be downloaded. We propose a fragmenting strategy based on the value of the wireless link's Maximum Transfer Units (MTUs). In addition, we present and evaluate several packetizing strategies, i.e., strategies wherein a collection of XDUs are grouped into a packet to optimize packet delivery and processing. At the receiving end of this process, a reassembly strategy incrementally reconstructs the XML document as XDU fragments are being received, thereby facilitating client application implementation of look-ahead processing.