Supporting context-aware database querying in an Ambient Intelligent environment

Advances in wireless communication and powerful computing technologies will eventually lead to a digital environment in which computing functionality will be embedded in all kinds of objects, which are capable of recognizing and responding to individual needs in a seamless, unobtrusive, and often invisible way. Such a vision was coined Ambient Intelligence (AmI), whose aim is to bring information and communication technologies to everyone, every home, every school, and every business. Different from the traditional desktop-based database access paradigm, users in an AmI environment may request information anytime anywhere via any handheld device. The digital environment continuously monitors users´ context (e.g., location, activity, etc.) to ensure the right information for the right user at the right context. The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of users´ context upon database querying, as reflected from an SQL-based context-aware database query language.