Patent ID: 7152019

Claim:
A computer for use in a distributed computing environment, the computer comprising: a processor; a communication system configured to provide communication between the processor and a plurality of sensing devices, each of the plurality of sensing devices being configured to acquire data with a sensor and store at least a portion of the acquired data as an individual data set; a data store in communication with the processor and configured to store a composite data set comprising data received from each of the plurality of sensing devices, wherein the data store is managed by a relational database management system and is part of a distributed database, the distributed database further comprising a set of lightweight database components local to at least one of the plurality of sensing devices; and a computer readable medium comprising instructions executable by the processor to: provide an instruction to at least one of the plurality of sensing devices; receive data from the at least one of the plurality of sensing devices, wherein the instruction to receive data from the at least one of the plurality of sensing devices comprises a command to synchronize at least a portion of the at least one of the plurality of sensing device's individual data set with the computer's composite data set; and store the received data as part of the composite data set.