Treffer: A Scalable Location Aware Service Platform for Mobile Applications Based on Java RMI.

In this paper, a generic service platform for supporting location aware applications is presented. The platform is based on Java to be independent of operating systems. We use RMI (Remote Method Invocation) for communication in the distributed system and Jini as an additional tool to offer and find services. The mobile client invokes methods on platform objects via RMI and offers its own remote methods to be used by the platform. To ensure the scalability of the system, central units (platform servers) are replicated in accordance with the deployment scenario. A new mechanism for the hand-over of objects, shared by clients and servers, between platform units is described. We introduce a new concept of objects and auras for efficient support of innovative location aware applications. The platform is also extended for thin clients without a JVM (Java Virtual Machine). A thin client communicates with the platform via a platform gateway using e.g. HTTP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]