Integrated Distributed/Mobile Logistics Management

The objective of the logistics management and control in a transport enterprise is to plan for the cheapest way to fulfill the transport needs of the customers and to offer services to the customers like for example supplying information about where products of the customers are in the transport process at any time. In case of delays in some transports this type of information may be important if the customers have to fulfill their obligations. The objective of this paper is to describe an architecture for logistics management systems where it is possible to integrate the logistics management systems of different cooperating transport companies or mobile users in order to optimize the availability to data that can optimize the transport process. In central databases the consistency of data is normally implemented by using the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability) properties of a DBMS (Data Base Management System). This is not possible if distributed and/or mobile databases are involved and the availability of data also has to be optimized. Therefore, we will in this paper use so-called relaxed ACID properties across different locations. The objective of designing relaxed ACID properties across different database locations is that the users can trust the data they use even if the distributed database is temporarily inconsistent. It is also important that disconnected locations can operate in a meaningful way in so-called disconnected mode.