Mobile Information Processing Involving Multiple Non-Collaborative Sources

As more and more servers appearing in the wireless environment provide accesses to mobile users, more and more demand and expectation is required by mobile users toward the available services. Mobile users are no longer satisfied with obtaining data only from one server, but require data from multiple servers either at the same or different locations. This eventually leads to the need for information gathering that spans across several non-collaborative servers. This article describes some of our researches in information gathering from multiple non-collaborative servers that may involve servers that not only accept direct queries from mobile users but also servers that broadcast data. We also look at how location dependent data plays an important role to mobile information gathering.