As initially envisioned by Mark Weiser, pervasive environments are the trend for the future of information systems. Heterogeneous devices, from small sensors to framework computers, are all linked though ubiquitous networks ranging from local peer-to-peer wireless connections to the world-wide Internet. Managing such environments, so as to benefit from its full potential of available resources providing information and services, is a challenging issue that covers several research fields like data representation, network management, service discovery... However, some issues have already been tackled independently by the database community, e.g. for distributed databases or data integration. In this survey, we analyze current trends in pervasive environment management through database principles and sketch the main components of our ongoing project SoCQ, devoted to bridging the gap between pervasive environments and databases.