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Transactions in Mobile Computing

The traditional properties of transactions: atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) need to be re-defined, extended, weakened or maybe even abandoned in order to provide an efficient transactional facility for mobile computing.

I will turn my attention towards transactions in (relational) database systems (see, e.g., [4], [36]), since that is where they come from in the first place. I hope to encounter (stumble upon) ideas for a new and improved transactional foundation for mobile computing. Even if some of the ACID properties need to be relaxed or abandoned, transactions should still be an easy-to-use and easy-to-grasp mechanism for achieving higher consistency.

To lay down useful guidelines for a future implementation of an efficient transactional facility on top of the provided file system will be the main objective of the discussion.