Semantic query caching in a mobile environment

Caching of remote data in a mobile client's local storage can improve data access performance and data availability. Traditional approaches are page-based, without taking advantage of the semantics of cached data. It is difficult for a client to determine if a query could be answered entirely based on locally cached data, forcing it to contact the database server for additional data. We propose a semantic caching mechanism which allows data to be cached as a collection of possibly related blocks, each of which is the result of a previously evaluated query. We investigate mechanisms for transforming projection-selection queries to reuse cached data blocks. This avoids transmitting unwanted data items over low bandwidth wireless channels. Cache replacement techniques based on the semantics of cached data are also proposed. We describe the design of our prototype and study its performance.