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Mobile Database Transaction Using Mobile

Agents
A.Priya, Dr. R.Dhanapal, T.P.Vijayalakshmi

Abstract—Mobile agents are programs that can move through a network under their own control, mi- grating from host to host and inte-
racting with other agents and resources on each. In mobile database systems, new features such as mobility, disconnection, heterogeneity,
self-command and distribution make traditional transaction processing schemes such as query processing technology, transaction manage-
ment technology and data distribution technology no longer suited. To solve this problem, a new mobile database model based on agent was
proposed. And transaction processing process based on this model was set forth. The model can shield the heterogeneous among all mem-
bers, and made them transparent so as to bring great conveniences to the entering of heterogeneous members. The introduction of mobile
agent contributes to decomposition of long-lived transaction, as to complete query optimization of mobile database.

Index Terms— mobile agent, mobile database, multi agent system, transaction processing.

——————————  ——————————

1 INTRODUCTION

M
obile computers have become increasingly pre-
valent as professionals discover the benefits of
having their electronic work available at all
times. Developing distributed applications that make effec-
tive use of networked resources from a mobile platform,
however, is difficult for several reasons. First, mobile com-
puters do not have a permanent connection into the net-
work and are often disconnected for long periods of time.
Second, when the computer is connected, the connection
often has low bandwidth and high latency and is prone to
sudden failure, such as when a physical obstruction blocks
the signal from a cellular modem.
Third, since the computer may be forced to use differ-
ent transmission channels depending on its physical loca-
tion, the performance of its network connection can vary
dramatically from one session to another. Finally, de-
pending on the nature of the transmission channel, the
computer might be assigned a different network address
each time that it connects. In short, any distributed appli-
cation that works on a mobile platform must deal with
unforgiving network conditions.
With the rapid development of internet and wireless
network technology the computer-centered mobile com-
puting technology has been widely used and developed,
so that people can access to any required information at
————————————————
 Asstistant Professor, Department of Computer Applications, Ve-
lammal Engineering College, Chennai – 600 066, Tamil Nadu, India.
Research & Development Centre, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. will bring about complex switchover problem of region.
 Professor, Department of Computer Applications, Easwari Engineer- prone to error [4, 5]. Mobile transaction processing has
ing College, Bharathi Salai, Ramapuram, Chennai – 600 089, Tamil Nadu,
India.
 SAP Data Archiving Consultant, Wipro Technologies, Client:Apple characteristics of mobile transaction. In order to improve
Inc, Cupertino, California, U.S.
anytime and anywhere [1]. In the mobile computing envi-
ronment, each mobile computing device has its own da-
tabase system. All the database systems in the mobile
computing environment created a mobile database cluster
(called “MDBC” for short). The traditional distributed
database technology has been difficult to support mobile
computing, because of the mobility, frequent disconnec-
tion, network diversity, non-symmetry of network com-
munications in mobile computing environment, and the
mobility, self-command, distribution, heterogeneity and
other features of the mobile database in the MDBC [2].
In order to effectively access the database in mobile
computing environment, mobile database technology
came into being. Mobile database technology as an exten-
sion of the distributed database technology has many
strengths of distributed database and unique features [3].
Mobile database system not only can manage datum and
information of the local terminals, but also can connect
the central database to process all kinds of transactions, so
as to meet the needs of information processing of differ-
ent industries and users in the mobile environment and
greatly improve the timeliness of information.
In mobile database, the transactions launched by the
mobile computer go by the name of mobile transaction.
Mobile transaction usually belongs to long-lived transac-
tion because of limited communication bandwidth and
frequent disconnection. In the processing of mobile
transactions, the location change of mobile computers
In addition, the processing of mobile transaction is more
become a challenging study field because of the above
the processing efficiency of mobile database system, a
new mobile database model based on agent was pro-
posed. And transaction processing process based on this

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model was set forth. The model can shield the heteroge-
neous among all members, and made them transparent so
as to bring great conveniences to the entering of hetero-
geneous members. The introduction of mobile agent con-
tributes to decomposition of long-lived transaction, as to
complete query optimization of mobile database.
Figure 1. Architecture of MDB model based on agent
2 RELATED TECHNOLOGIES OF AGENTS
Agent is a kind of computer system that is in a specific
environment and can perceive surroundings. Agent is a
computing entity or program that can achieve a series of
goals of designers and user, and can flexibly and auto-
nomously operate in that kind of environment. Intelligent
agent provides a new way of computing and problem
solving, and a way of intelligent remote programming.
2.1 Multi Agent System
Multi agent system is consisted of many interactive and
interrelated agents. Multi agent system’s ability of solu-
tion and collaboration is over a single Agent. In multi
agent system, people are concerned about how to organ-
ize the existent agents to complete the work a single agent
can not do.
2.2 Mobile Agent
Mobile Agent can freely move among the hosts of net-
work. After a mobile agent is constructed in an environ-
ment, it can purposefully and independently move to
another environment carrying its own codes and states
and continue to run. Mobile agent is a kind of software
entity completing distributed tasks by local interaction
with the distributed resources [6]. Mobile agent is an ex-
pand way of traditional Client/Server. It can bring more
flexibility, efficiency, reliability and intelligence to distri-
buted calculation, so mobile Agent has more and more
89
attention.
3 ARCHITECTURE OF MDB MODEL BASED
ON AGENT
Based on the above analysis and researches, a MDB mod-
el was designed, and the architecture of the model is
shown in Fig. 1[7].
3.1 Mobile Terminal Layer
This layer includes all mobile terminals having the ability
of transaction processing. The model provides a two-way
strategy that not only is applied to requesting transaction,
submitting transaction, but also is applied to accepting
transaction and processing transaction in this layer. The
layer includes management agent and interface agent.
The main responsibility of management agent is to preli-
minarily analysis and process transaction submitted by
users or user applications, and to management local
transactions of database. The main responsibility of inter-
face agent is to process global transactions and remote
transactions, or to act as an interface between local data-
base and wireless net database server.
The functions of the two kinds of agents and the other
units are described as follow.
 Management agent: Its main function is to manage the
local computing resources of mobile computing devic-
es. These resources can be used to execute mobile
agents. The agent preliminarily analyses and processes
transaction submitted by users or user applications,
and manages local transactions of database.
 Interface agent: As an interface, the agent needs to
create a context of processing transactions for mobile
agents and to provide a public data form of expression
for local datum stored in mobile devices. Thinking of
the characteristics of XML, XML can be used as the
public data form of expression. An interface agent run-
ning in a given mobile unit needs to temporarily trans-
fer one or more services to the other mobile devices in
the mobile database group for improving the efficiency.
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At the same time, once some crises happen, the inter-
face agent will also bear the responsibility of the above.
So, when any mobile agent visits the interface agents of
the mobile unit, it must declare the service that comes
from which mobile device.
 Transaction pretreatment unit: The unit initially
processes the transactions submitted by users or appli-
cations. Then the unit analyses whether or not the
transactions can be processed in the local database, and
divides these transactions into local transactions and
global transactions. In the end, the local transactions are
sent to the local database server, the global transactions
are sent to the global/remote transaction manager.
 Global/Remote transaction manager: After the manag-
er receives the global transactions coming from the
transaction pretreatment unit, the interface agent re-
sided in the manager will select the right node in the
MDBC to process these global transactions by the re-
sources searched from database. The manager can de-
compose the global transactions into many sub-
transactions, and attach these sub-transactions to mo-
bile agents. These sub-transactions move to correspond-
ing units with the mobile agents to be operated in the
MDBC.
 Mobile agent platform: The module is responsible for
the creation of all kinds of mobile agents (the four
agents described above), and the summary and analysis
of all kinds of information fed back by mobile agents.
3.2 Mobile Agent Layer
Mobile agents are responsible for the implementation
of the logic mobile functions in this mobile database ar-
chitecture. It should have the ability to transfer itself to
another member from one member of MDBC. In this mo-
bile database architecture, the basic abilities of the mobile
agents are to carry and transmit visiting codes and visit-
ing results.
Figure 2. The structure of mobile agents
Mobile Database among every member in the MDBC.
The mobile agent layer includes operating agent, trans-
mitting agent, pick-up agent and temporary agent, as
shown in the Fig. 2. The main tasks of these mobile agents
are as follows.
90
 Operating agent: The main task of it is to implement
the tasks that the mobile units need to complete in the
MDBC. These tasks include data querying, data updat-
ing or mobile database model updating.
 Transmitting agent: The main task of it is to transmit
database querying results to the mobile units that need-
ing the querying results.
 Pick-up agent: The main task of it is to collect a variety
of heterogeneous database model in the MDBC when a
new mobile database unit is added into one MDBC.
 Temporary agent: It can define the mobile unit as a
temporary storage device, and temporarily store the
querying results in the storage device, when a sub-
query transaction gets a part of querying results from a
mobile unit.
When mobile agents arrive at one database node, its
subquery can be extracted by a mobile agent platform,
and be transmitted to the database agent in the node. The
database agent that having related connecting drivers of
local database and related implementation interfaces can
further reduce the amount of data carried by the mobile
agent. Database agent can transfer sub-query to local
query, and trigger local database transactions also. Then
database agent transfers the query results to the uniform
XML form, and returns them to the mobile agent plat-
form.
4 AGENT NAVIGATION AND ADAPTATION
The world of an agent is dynamic and uncertain. Ma-
chines go up and down, the information stored in reposi-
tories changes, and the exact sequence of destinations and
steps needed to complete an information-gathering task
often is not completely known at the time that the agent is
launched into the world. An autonomous agent is crip-
pled without external state (what the agent can perceive
about the state of its world) since it has no way of per-
ceiving and adapting to the dynamic changes in its envi-
ronment. In this section it is described the sensors that
allow an agent to determine its external state and a me-
chanism that uses these sensors for adaptive navigation.
Network sensing, at least the ability for a laptop to
detect the state of its network connection, is an integral
part of our laptop docking system described in the pre-
vious sub-section [8]. It performs an even more important
task, however, when providing agents with information
about the expected transit time across the network and
about whether a network site is reachable at all. This in-
formation enables agents to adapt to changing network
conditions. Consider an agent that needs to visit informa-
tion resources at several sites. A smart agent should be
able to adapt to the fact that some sites may currently be
unreachable, and to visit other sites first. An even smarter
agent may be able to plan a sequence of visits given an
estimate of the current network delay to each site. Other
agents may wish to tailor their behavior to the current
bandwidth available, such as the amount or format of the
data that it carries with them.
A set of network sensing tools that the agents can use
to gather information about the status of the network as
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shown below:
 A tool to determine whether the local host is physically
connected. This tool \pings" the broadcast address on
the local subnet; if there is any response in a short in-
terval, the network is connected.
 A tool to determine whether a specific host is reachable;
this is just the standard \ping."
 A tool to determine the expected bandwidth to a re-
mote host, so that agents can choose their destination or
amount of data based on the bandwidth. Rather than
measuring the bandwidth by sending lots of data to the
remote host, which would often take as much time as
sending the agent itself, the attempt to predict band-
width from experience. A track monitor agent at each
site tracks information about all recent communications
(bytes moved and time required), which is provided by
the local agent server. Application agents contact the
network monitor to obtain estimates of bandwidth or
latency, which are computed from the recorded infor-
mation. If there are no recent communications with the
requested site, the track monitor may use data from re-
cent communications with \similar" sites, that is, other
sites in the same subnet or domain as the requested site.
Figure 3: An example of navigation.
Navigation agents. To locate other agents that can
serve their needs, agents need access to a dynamic index
of service agents and their locations. By consulting these
navigation services and using their network sensing tools,
agents can formulate adaptive navigation plans to visit
some of the services. The virtual yellow pages are a dis-
tributed database of service locations maintained by a
hierarchical set of navigation agents. Services register
with the navigation agents that are scattered throughout
the system (Figure 3). Each machine has a specialist agent
that knows the location of some of the navigation agents
(which in turn know the locations of services and other
navigation agents). In general, by consulting the local
specialist agent and then visiting one or more navigation
agents, an application agent can obtain the necessary list
of services and their locations.
Since the information landscape changes, the virtual
91
yellow pages are not static entities. The adaptive learning
methods to keep the virtual yellow pages up to date.
New services register with one or more navigation
agents to advertise their location. For example, in Figure
3, service 1 registers with navigation agent 2 by the fol-
lowing protocol: service 1 first contacts the specialist
agent on its machine which knows the location of naviga-
tion agent 2. Service 1 then sends a registration message
to navigation agent 2 which adds service 1 to the data-
base.
An application agent locates a list of navigation agents
by querying the specialist agent on the local host (Figure
3). The application agent then consults the navigation
agents by providing a list of keywords. The navigation
agent returns a list of matching services from its database.
After visiting some of the services, the application agent
revisits the navigation agents to provide feedback on
which of the sites were useful and which were useless.
These \consumer reports" enable the navigation agents to
prioritize their lists.
Agents that discover services accidentally report the
corresponding sites to the navigation agents. For exam-
ple, services relevant to one task may be discovered while
handling a different but related task. Such a situation
might arise if an agent handles textual queries about dif-
ferent topics; while finding documents relevant to one
topic, it may discover document collections that relate to
another. Alternatively, an agent might receive different
site information from two navigation agents; it feeds the
differences back to the navigation agents.
Each machine has a number of agents running on it
(denoted by rectangular blocks.) The specialist agents
know about the location of one or more navigation
agents. There are two navigation agents shown here: one
on machine 1 and one on machine 2. The navigation agent
on machine 2 knows about service 1, but the navigation
agent on machine 1 does not. The specialist agent on ma-
chine 3 knows about both navigation agents.
The customer agent on machine 3 uses the following
protocol to locate service 1. It first contacts its local spe-
cialist agent and finds the location of navigation agents 1
and 2. Then it migrates to machine 1 and queries naviga-
tion agent 1 about service 1. This navigation agent does
not know about service 1 since service 1 is only registered
with navigation agent 2. The customer agent then mi-
grates to machine 2 where it queries navigation agent 2
and finds the location of service 1. Finally, the customer
agent migrates to the location of service 1. Application
agents construct an initial plan for accomplishing their
task by using the prioritized list of services that it receive
from the navigation agents. Most applications will want
to visit either one or all of the sites on the list.
5 TRANSACTION PROCESSING PROCESS
OF THE MDB MODEL
The model in Fig. 1 is an abstract model. In order to ex-
plain its operation process, assume the followings:
 Assuming a mobile unit MU plan to construct a
MDBC[9] based on its own.
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 In order to the MDBC can be constructed, first of all,
MU must declare to its own interface agent that it will
be declared as initialization organizer in this MDBC to
be built.
 Then the MU sends the information of the new MDBC
to all mobile terminals covered by the MU’s wireless
network.
 When new members plan to join this new MDBC, the
organizer will no longer be required.
 Organization function will be completed by all kinds of
agents in the MDBC.
5.1 Instance of Mobile Transaction Processing
Based on the MDB Model
First of all, in order to illustrate the details of all database
models, a clear statement of the MU must be given by the
local interface agent. At the same time, a pick-up agent
will be constructed and be initialized by the local inter-
face agent. Then the pick-up agent moves in all mobile
units to pick up their local database models. The local
interface agent will provide local database model, and
transfer it to XML form, the formal form of model.
When the pick-up agent of the MU returns to the MU,
it will bring back database models of all database mem-
bers, and will divert them to the interface agent of MU.
Thus, MU owns the database models of all mobile data-
bases in MDBC [9]. Users or mobile applications of MU
will have the ability to visit the datum stored in other
mobile devices in the MDBC through the interface pro-
vided by the local interface agent [10]. When the interface
agent of MU receives a global query request, it will con-
struct an operation agent in the MU, and send the infor-
mation of global query request to the operation agent.
Then the operation agent begins to process the query
transaction.
5.2 Process of a Query Transaction
First of all, the interface agent of the MU constructs an
operation agent, then the operation agent move to the
MU to process the transaction, because the MU includes
the target database of processing the query transaction
[11,12,13].
When the operation agent arrives at the MU, it will
submit the information of transaction processing to the
local interface agent of the MU. The local interface agent
needs not to think of the type of the transaction. The type
of the transaction is transparent for the local interface
agent because of the agency role of the operation agent, so
as to improve the mobile transaction processing efficien-
cy.
When the result of transaction processing comes out,
the local interface agent will send the result to operation
agent. If the result is too large, and the operation agent
must move to other mobile units to process transaction at
the same time, the operation agent can construct a trans-
mitting agent and send the result to the agent. The trans-
mitting agent will return to the starting node of the opera-
tion agent that constructing the agent along the moving
path of the operation agent.
When the operation agent returns to the MU too, it will
92
send a sign of completing the transaction to the interface
agent of the MU. The interface agent will process the re-
lated information of the transaction in the local MU, and
show the result to the user or application of the mobile
database. At last, the interface agent will come to process
the next transaction.
6 CONCLUSIONS
Mobile transaction processing has become a challenging
study field. In order to improve the processing efficiency
of mobile database system, a new mobile database model
based on agent was proposed. And transaction
processing process based on this model was set forth. The
model can shield the heterogeneous among all members,
and made them transparent so as to bring great conve-
niences to the entering of heterogeneous members. It’s
clear that the introduction of mobile agent can contribute
to decomposition of long-lived transaction, as to complete
query optimization of mobile database.
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A.Priya is presently pursuing her Ph.D Computer Science in Bhara-
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thiar University, Coimbatore. She got her Masters degree in Com-
puter Science from Avinashilingam University, Coimbatore and Mas-
ter of Philosophy in Computer Science from Manonmaniam Sundar-
narar University, Tirunelveli. She is currently working as an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Computer Applications, Velammal
Engineering College, Chennai and Affiliated to Anna University of
Technology Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. She has 11 years of Teach-
ing and Administrative experience and 2 years of research expe-
rience. She worked as a Controller of Examinations for the Auto-
nomous College affiliated to Thiruvalluvar University, Vellore. She
guided about 8 M.Phil Scholars in several universities such as Ala-
gappa University, Karaikudi, Prist University, Thanjavur, Mother Tere-
sa Women’s University, Kodaikanal. She is a Life time Member in
ISTE Chapter. She organized DRDO sponsored National Confe-
rence in the Department of Computer Applications, Velammal Engi-
neering College, Chennai. Her publications are one International
Journal, one International Conference (in IEEE Proceedings) and six
National Conferences.

Dr.R.Dhanapal obtained his Ph.D in Computer Science from Bhara-

thidasan University, India. He is currently Professor of the Depart-
ment of Computer Applications, Easwari Engineering College, Affi-
liated to Anna University of Technology Chennai, Tamil Nadu India.
He has 25 years of teaching, research and administrative expe-
rience. Besides being Professor, he is also a prolific writer, having
authored twenty one books on various topics in Computer Science.
His books have been prescribed as text books in Bharathidasan
University and autonomous colleges affiliated to Bharathidasan Uni-
versity, Tiruchirapalli. He has served as Chairman of Board of Stu-
dies in Computer Science of Bharathidasan University, member of
Board of studies in Computer Science of several universities and
autonomous colleges. Member of standing committee of Artificial
Intelligence and Expert Systems of IASTED, Canada and Senior
Member of International Association of Computer Science and In-
formation Technology (IACSIT), Singapore. He has Visited USA,
Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore for presenting papers in the Interna-
tional conferences and to demonstrate the software developed by
him. He is the recipient of the prestigious ‘Life-time Achievement’ and
‘Excellence’ Awards of Govt. of India. He is serving as Principal In-
vestigator of UGC sponsored innovative, major and minor research
projects about 1.6 crore. He is the recognized supervisor for re-
search programmes in Computer Science leading to Ph.D and MS
by research in several universities including Anna University of
Technology Chennai, Bharathiar University, and Manonmaniam
Sundaranar University. He has got 47 papers on his credit in interna-
tional and national journals.

T.P.Vijayalakshmi obtained her Masters in Computer science from

Avinashilingam University, Coimbatore and M.Phil in Computer
Science from Mother Teresa University, Kodaikanal, India. She is
currently working as a SAP Data Archiving Consultant, Wipro Tech-
nologies, Client - Apple Inc, Cupertino, California, U.S. She has 14
years of IT, Teaching and Administrative experience.