Digital persona : a gateway to personal information

Abstract

A Digital Persona (DP) is a gateway to a set of personal information, such as phone numbers and email addresses. Applications and devices which use personal information, such as electronic calendars and cellular phones, can manage this information by using a DP. Information which is accessible through a DP can be stored in the DP itself or in other applications. Since a DP facilitates the transfer of information between devices and applications, a DP can help solve many information management problems, such as handling data with different internal representations. The DP's structured, yet flexible, object model allows di-verse devices and applications to access and update information without being forced to adopt a common object model. This thesis discusses the design of the DP object model and API, as well as the DP's implementation. Implementation details which are covered include object-oriented techniques, reflection, and interfaces.