Mowgli - Mobile Work, Gadgets, Language and Infrastructure

We look at software support for mobile users from two different viewpoints: a framework-based approach aiming at identifying the necessary concepts, and a formal approach using process calculus for rigorous definitions of the concepts. We present a scientific method for analyzing concepts that we call ‘conceptual archaeology’ and this underlies our work. The first viewpoint gives the necessary elements in a framework supporting mobile users based on the limitations of mobile environments and the requirements of mobile users. Among the necessary elements is an understanding of the concept session. The second viewpoint is one of formal analysis. Traditionally -calculus and related families of theories attempt to describe adequately the domain of distributed systems. We take the tools from a recent textbook by Robin Milner in use to test the adequacy of the -calculus as a modeling tool in
the domain. Among the concept we attempt to model is ‘session’.