Location Dependent Query Processing – Issues, Challenges and Applications

The growth in the number of mobile users is motivating the new technology of mobile computing to offer many new types of services like location-based services that pose many challenging problems for location-dependent query processing and data management. In this paper, we discuss the various challenges in distributed processing of location-dependent continuous queries in a mobile environment by studying the different scenarios in which both the querying unit and the object being queried are in motion. Then we proceed to classify different types of location dependent queries. We discuss the different solutions to solve these complex location dependent queries using caching techniques that facilitate fast access to data and at the same time minimize the massive network traffic generated due to location dependent query processing in a wireless environment. To further reduce the data transfer the query results are cached so that these results are reusable. The conventional query processing method like join processing of data from mobile units and server is directly applied in the mobile environment. Additionally this paper also focuses on the methods of location-dependent query processing and applications. The main goal of this paper is to study the various location dependent query processing methods along with data management problems involved in evaluation of Location-dependent queries and classify them.