On Integrating Heterogeneous Locating Services

This paper presents a unified locating service, KULOCS, which horizontally integrates the existing heterogeneous locating services. Focusing on technology-independent elements [when], [where] and [who] in querying locations of objects, KULOCS integrates data and operations of the existing services. In the data integration, we propose a method where the time representation, the locations, the namespace of user are consolidated by Unix time, the location labels and the alias table, respectively. We then propose KULOCS-API that integrates operations by all possible combinations of [when], [where] and [who]. Since KULOCS works as a seamless façade to the underlying locating services, clients can consume location information easily and efficiently, without knowing concrete services actually locating target objects. Also, we examine feasibility of two practical value-added services with KULOCS.