Context-Aware Processing of Ontologies in Mobile Environments

This paper describes the ideas, open issues and the aims of a new research project, called MobileOntoDB. The goal is to develop a context-aware, database based ontology reasoner for mobile devices. Users would benefit a lot from ontology based information systems on mobile devices, but since mobile resources are restricted, new techniques for main memory saving resolution, for partial evaluation, replication and synchronization of ontologies are needed. We propose a database supported approach, based on our "meta mapping" approach, successfully developed in a former project for huge ontologies on servers. It has the capability to be efficiently scaled down to mobile devices. In addition dynamic contextawareness will be added to the system, in order to get better and more appropriate resolution results. Context is not only time and location but also the situation and user preferences, which broadens today’s location based services by far. In this paper we discuss the fundamental ideas, the architecture, applications and a number of open issues on the way to an integrated context-aware ontology-supported information system for mobile devices.