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 in- formation and services for granted. This scenario is made possible by the rapid advances in the underlying hardware technologies, which continue to follow vari- ants of Moore's Law. Examples of location-based services include tracking, way-finding, traffic man- agement, 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.