THE ROMA PERSONAL METADATA SERVICES

THE ROMA PERSONAL METADATA SERVICES

ABSTRACT:

People are instinctively mobile. They use a diversity of digital storage facilities, such as laptops, cell phone address books, handheld devices, desktop computers and web-based storage services. Unfortunately, as the number of such personal data repositories increases, so does the management problem of ensuring that the most up-to-date version of any document in a user's personal space is available to him/her on the storage facility he/she is currently using. The Roma personal metadata service makes it easier to locate current versions of personal files and ensures their availability across different repositories.

Mobility-aware applications store information about each of a user's files, such as name, location, timestamp and keywords, on this centralized metadata service. Separating out these metadata from the data repositories makes it practical to keep the metadata store on a highly available, portable device. Description of the design requirements, architecture and current prototype implementation of Roma are provided.

INTRODUCTION:

People use digital devices to store their personal files – like email messages, financial records, movies, music, photographs, notes, presentations, address books and phone numbers. Such files may be stored on different data repositories as people come to rely more heavily on digital devices such as the laptops, cell phone address books, handheld devices, desktop computers and web-based storage services to work and communicate. Since people are free to switch among multiple heterogeneous devices to access and use their personal files wherever and whenever they want, file management while using whatever device is most inconvenient to them.

For example, you wishing to maintain a phone and address book would record the information in your desktop PC, scribble some important phone numbers and birth dates into your personal digital assistant, or record some of the phone numbers in a web-based service. One might expect this plethora of storage options to be a catalyst for personal mobility. Instead, the contemporary file management tools are poor at handling multiple data repositories in the face of intermittent connectivity. This has made it harder for mobile people to ensure that up-to- date versions of files they need are available on the current storage option of choice. There is no easy way for a user to determine whether a file on the device he/she is currently using will be accessible later on another device, or whether the various copies of that file across all devices are up-to-date. As a result, the user may end up with many out-of-date or inconsistent copies of the same file scattered on different devices.


for more info visit.
http://www.enjineer.com/forum