Concurrency Control in Mobile Environments: Issues & Challenges

The use of data services from handheld devices has increased exponentially resulting in several challenges. Transactions requiring the same shared data item may simultaneously perform a write operation leading to inconsistency of data items. The generic characteristics of mobile environments like variable bandwidth, disconnections, mobility etc makes transaction management more difficult thereby the traditional Isolation property may not be guaranteed. This paper analyzes and compares various concurrency control strategies in mobile environments proposed in literature. The design requirement for preserving isolation property in mobile environments is also presented.