The Improved Peer2Me Framework: A flexible framework for mobile collaboration

Abstract

This master thesis presents a new and redesigned version of Peer2Me, a framework for developing mobile collaborative applications on mobile phones. The first version of Peer2Me was designed and created by Carl-Henrik Wolf Lund and Michael Sars Norum in 2005, which was presented in their master thesis, The Peer2Me Framework, [31]. We evaluated their framework in our depthstudy [5], fall of 2005. The evaluation showed that the framework lacked some desired and necessary functionality, had some bugs and was a bit hard to use. This thesis also describes the history of Peer2Me along with cental concepts regarding peer-to-peer networking in an mobile ad hoc environment. There are a lot of on going and finished projects that can be related to Peer2Me. We have chosen to investigate the most interesting and relevant projects, which are presented in Chapter 11, State of the Art. Since a redesign of the Peer2Me framework was necessary, we have performed a research in the most recognized architectural tactics, design patterns and architectural patters. Before embarking on the task of designing the framework, a research in the latest technology was necessary. In our depthstudy [5], we had already performed such a research, so we only had to obtain the latest development in the related areas. Special attention was given to the Bluetooth wireless network technology. All created packages, classes and interfaces are thoroughly described along with their roles in the framework. We felt that a mere description of the modules was not enough, so we wrote Chapter 16, Design Decisions, which discusses the different crossroads we faced with during development, and the path we chose. To give the reader an impression of how the framework can be used, we also developed some applications that utilizes the new framework. Lastly we evaluated our work, compared the old and new framework, discussed the problems we encountered, answered our research questions and summarized the thesis. All source code, javadoc and a functional, new version of Peer2Me are attached along with this report.