Transaction-centric split synchronization mechanism for mobile e-business applications

A mobile e-business client application may intentionally operate in disconnected mode to reduce the communication cost and the power consumption of mobile devices. We use "data hoarding" to allow business transactions to be processed on the mobile client despite of disconnection, which is implemented by the materialized view. We split the synchronization of a mobile transaction with the server database into 2 steps: intermediate and final synchronization. The intermediate synchronization uses the high cost wireless medium while the final synchronization generally uses the low cost communication medium such as a wired LAN. User can customize the synchronization details including the synchronization type for each data object through the materialized view definition expressed in extended SQL. We present the Transaction-Centric Split Synchronization (TCSS) algorithm and evaluate its performance. It supports the customized synchronization for each object that a transaction accesses. Appropriately selected synchronization details considering the data object's semantics can make it possible to save the power consumption of the mobile device and wireless communication cost.