Mobile networks have undergone rapid development these last decades; the mobile user is no longer the exception. In addition, the mobile user employs an increasing number of devices and has access to an ever-increasing number of services and functionalities. Personalization and context-aware applications attempt to simplify access to and usage of this multitude of devices and services. However, both require the availability of reliable user context information to be effective. In this paper, we present a personal context storage system enabling a user to access personal information and personalized services from any personal device. A user centric replication model and a novel access interface well adapted to context access patterns are techniques we put forward to get round the well-known trade-off between consistency and availability for the specific storage system we focus on: a user centred storage system.
['Stephanie Riche', 'Gavin Brebner']
Storing and accessing user context