Data Caching in Next Generation Mobile Cloud Services, Online vs. Off-Line

In this paper we consider the data caching problem in next generation data services in the cloud, which is characterized by using monetary cost and access trajectory information to control cache replacements, instead of exploiting capacityoriented strategies as in traditional research. In particular, given a stream of requests to a shared data item with respect to a homogeneous cost model, we first propose a fast off-line algorithm using dynamic programming techniques. The proposed algorithm can generate optimal schedule within O(mn) timespace complexity to cache, migrate as well as replicate the shared data item to serve an n-length request sequence with minimum cost in a fully connected m-node network, substantially improving the previous results. Additionally, we also study this problem in its online form, and present a 3-competitive online algorithm by leveraging a speculative caching idea. The algorithm can serve an online request in constant time, and is space efficient in O(m) as well, rendering it to be more practical in reality. Our research complements the shortage of similar research in literature on this problem.