Location-based services: A database perspective

We are heading rapidly towards a global computing and information infrastructure that will contain billions of wirelessly connected devices, many of which will offer so-called location-based services to their mobile users always and everywhere. Indeed, users will soon take ubiquitous wireless access to information and services for granted. This scenario is made possible by the rapid advances in the underlying hardware technologies, which continue to follow variants of Moore’s Law. Examples of location-based services include tracking, way-finding, traffic management, safety-related services, and mixed-reality games, to name but a few. This paper outlines a general usage scenario for location-based services, in which data warehousing plays a central role, and it describes central challenges to be met by the involved software technologies in order for them to reach their full potential for usage in location-based services.