What is On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Thanks to the explosion of the wireless technology, mobile environments are becoming the leading software platforms for extracting knowledge and interacting with enterprise information systems. Data and services availability at all times is the major benefit coming from such deployment scenario, but new research challenges pose serious limitations concerning data engineering issues. In fact, although if one can suppose that re-writing and re-adapting data structures, algorithms, and data reliability/dependability schemes is the natural way to support efficient data management on mobile environments, new issues and old limitations arise, particularly for what concerns with data availability and consistency in wireless network environments.