Design and realization of a middleware for mobile task coordination

The trend towards interconnection of applications has long been recognized as a key challenge for information systems design. Following this trend, organi- zations have developed and introduced many distributed systems with differ- ent functionalities. Furthermore, computing becomes today increasingly mobile; performances of mobile devices (i.e. PDAs and smartphones) as well as the expansion of high-speed mobile networks allows many tasks to be performed beyond stationary workspaces.
The dramatic growth of stand-alone and partly incompatible applications will negatively affect the integration, coordination and communication for entire so- lution. Contemporary solutions focus on stationary systems only; the usage of mobile devices is limited to simple scenarios (i.e. information access). In order to support the seamless integration of mobile devices, future distributed solutions should take services and service meta-information into account (e.g. variation of network bandwidth, battery power, availability, connectivity, reachability, sensors data and locations of services and service providers).
In this master thesis we want to analyze how a distributed environment with va- riety of separated (mobile) service providers - implemented with different tech- nologies - can be integrated and coordinated. Finding compromises between performance, comfort and intelligent intercommunication is the main goal of this thesis. Therefore, it is concentrated on the conceptualization and design of a central middleware component that provide the coordination and communication functionalities for stationary and mobile entities. In order to prove some possible communication scenarios, the thesis provides a middleware-based scenario.