AskME: A Database Abstraction for Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract

In this fast moving world, connectivity plays an important role. The need for con- nectivity can vary from a simple transfer of an image, to a complicated message passing for military purposes. To obtain this connectivity, the infrastructure we need is not available all the time. Thus in such a situation we have to move to the ad hoc connectivity. For a given ad hoc network, there are various devices which connects to that network which again varies from a sensor mote to a laptop. The information we can obtain from these devices are immense. It can be the GPS location, the temperature, the humidity or the song currently played in the device. Even though we have this big array of data still we do not have a database abstraction to access this information which resides on these mobile devices. Database abstractions, such as TinyDB and TikiriDB, have been used success- fully in wireless sensor networks (WSN). These abstractions provide a SQL query interface to extract data from sensors and it has proven to be a convenient pro- gramming interface in these environments. However, a relational database model that guarantees ACID properties is not a good match for a wireless sensor network since consistent connectivity or the uninterrupted operation of the sensor nodes cannot be expected. We noted that the NoSQL approach which does not rely on the ACID properties is a better match for a database abstraction for WASNs. We also noted that this idea can be extended to wireless ad hoc networks in general and we implemented a NoSQL based database abstraction for smartphones which uses Android operating system.