Model-Driven Development of Context-Aware Services

Abstract. In this paper, we define a model-driven design trajectory for contextaware services consisting of three levels of models with different degrees of abstraction and platform independence. The models at the highest level of platform independence describe the behaviour of a context-aware service and its environment from an integrated perspective. The models at the intermediate level describe abstract components, which realize the context-aware service in terms of a service-oriented abstract platform. At the lowest level, the realization of a context-aware service is described in terms of specific target technologies, such as Web Services, BPEL and Parlay technologies. Our approach allows service designers to concentrate their efforts on the services they intend to create and offer, by facilitating the handling of context information and automating design steps through model transformation. In addition, our approach enables the reuse of platform-independent models for different target platforms

An approach for the Development of adaptable Services-oriented Systems

Software engineering is marked by the emergency of two paradigms: SOC (Service Oriented Computing) and CAC (Context-Aware Computing). While SOC paradigm aims to deal in the problem of interoperability, the CAC paradigm main’s target is to challenge the adaptability of IS contexts. The adoption of these two paradigms raised the challenge of the development process of Services Oriented Systems (SOS) adaptable to the context. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model driven the development process of Services-Oriented Systems adaptable to users’ context

Developing Unobtrusive Mobile Interactions: a Model Driven Engineering approach

In Ubiquitous computing environments, people are surrounded by a lot of embedded services. With the inclusion of pervasive technologies such as sensors or GPS receivers, mobile devices turn into an effective communication tool between users and the services embedded in their environment. All these services compete for the attentional resources of the user. Thus, it is essential to consider the degree in which each service intrudes the user mind when services are designed. In order to prevent service behavior from becoming overwhelming, this work, based on Model Driven Engineering foundations, is devoted to develop services according to user needs. In this thesis, we provide a systematic method for the development of mobile services that can be adapted in terms of obtrusiveness. That is, services can be developed to provide their functionality at different obtrusiveness levels by minimizing the duplication of efforts. For the system specification, a modeling language is defined to cope with the particular requirements of the context-aware user interface domain. From this specification, following a sequence of well-defined steps, a software solution is obtained.Gil Pascual, M. (2010). Developing Unobtrusive Mobile Interactions: a Model Driven Engineering approach. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/12745Archivo delegad

Behaviour modelling and transformations for context-aware mobile applications

Today‟s panorama of service offerings is characterised by the widespread diffusion of the Internet and Web-based technologies everywhere in society. We are surrounded by devices that can support us in several tasks of our every-day life, like, for example, e-readers to access books and magazines, or mobile phones with extremely intuitive user interfaces for browsing, checking emails, keeping in touch with colleagues and friends through social networks, finding maps and locations, and so on. Moreover, this daily experience would not be possible without ultra-fast networks and wireless technologies that allow us to exchange any kind of data, anywhere, in real time and at low-cost. In this panorama, it becomes of vital importance for service providers to offer services that are innovative and distinctive. On one hand, service providers have to preserve current customers and attract new ones in order to survive in an ever growing arena of competitors. On the other hand, service users become more and more aware of the opportunities offered by the evolving technologies and, consequently, more demanding and with stronger expectations than in the past. Therefore, users expect a profusion of services wherever they are, to support whatever they are doing, and according to their personal preferences and needs, while providers have to create a wide range of enriched services in a rapid, low-cost and user-centric way.\ud This thesis proposes a layered methodology based on behaviour modelling and transformations for the development of context-aware mobile applications, which are distributed applications that can provide advanced and personalised services to their users. Currently available approaches, such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), are used in this thesis to support such a methodology. The main objective is to progress the state-of-the-art in model-driven development of context-aware mobile applications by taking into account the behaviour of these applications already in early stages of the development process. In order to achieve this, we refine the application behaviour in several steps, from abstract specifications to final implementations, and develop automated model transformations throughout these refinement steps to generate executable models and reason about their behavioural correctness

A Dynamic User-Centric Mobile Context Model

Context-aware systems can dynamically adapt to user situations to provide smarter services. In general, context refers to the information that can be used to characterize these situations, and context models are deployed to specify contextual information described in context-aware systems. However, even though user context is highly dynamic, existing context models either focus on modeling static views of context or lack appropriate design abstractions to deal with dynamic aspects and interactions involving contextual elements such location, time, user roles, social relationships, and changing preferences. Moreover, virtual environments have not been modelled by most of the existing context models even though online interaction is very common and popular. This thesis presents a dynamic user-centric context model that can be used to model the aspects of context-aware systems that are subject to frequent change. Four case studies are proposed to illustrate the applicability of the approach taken by this thesis, and they are in the domains of mobile e-healthcare, mobile commerce, mobile tourism, and mobile augmented reality gaming. Benefits of the proposed model include avoiding the development of context-aware systems from scratch, enabling future use of model-driven approaches, and reducing implementation effort

On the Role of Context in the Design of Mobile Mashups

This paper presents a design methodology and an accompanying platform for the design and fast development of Context-Aware Mobile mashUpS (CAMUS). The approach is characterized by the role given to context as a first-class modeling dimension used to support i) the identification of the most adequate resources that can satisfy the users' situational needs and ii) the consequent tailoring at runtime of the provided data and functions. Context-based abstractions are exploited to generate models specifying how data returned by the selected services have to be merged and visualized by means of integrated views. Thanks to the adoption of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) techniques, these models drive the flexible execution of the final mobile app on target mobile devices. A prototype of the platform, making use of novel and advanced Web and mobile technologies, is also illustrated

Contextualised security operation deployment through [email protected] architecture

International audienceThe fast development of Cloud-based services and applications have a significant impact on Service Oriented Computing as it provides an efficient support to share data and processes. The de-perimeterised vision involved by these Intelligent Service Clouds lead to new security challenges: providing a consistent protection depending on the business environment conditions and on the deployment platform specific threats and vulnerabilities. To fit this context aware protection deployment challenge, we propose a [email protected] architecture, coupling Model Driven Security (MDS) and [email protected] approaches. By this way, security policies (that can be generated via a MDS process) are interpreted at runtime by a security mediator depending on the context. This proposition is illustrated thanks to a proof of concept prototype plugged on top of the FraSCAti middleware

Towards model-driven requirements analysis for context-aware well-being systems

Research interest in the domain of pervasive systems has seen a rapid increase, evident from the amount of research papers being published each year. These systems are to blend in with everyday life, being completely unobtrusive. Through the use of sensors, pervasive systems can become context-aware. As such, they are able to use this context information in order to improve the services provided to the user. Interesting fields of application are those of health-care and well-being. The COMMIT SWELL project aims to improve both physical and mental well-being by developing a sensor-based context-aware system. This system is to (i) aid the user into improving his own lifestyle by giving him insight in his personal activity, and (ii) support the user in his work. In the domain of context-aware systems, we find that requirements have to align perfectly with the features to be offered by the system. If not, the system will become a hindrance to the user, who will then neglect it. Requirements engineering and architectural development for this type of system is largely unexplored territory. A bottom-up approach is often used: little attention is paid to requirements engineering up front, and architectures are created without having reuse in mind. Our objective is to improve the reuse of system requirements and architecture, resulting in an improvement of alignment between these artifacts. In order to facilitate this alignment, we aim to create a model-driven method that allows for bi-directional transformation between requirements and architecture at design time. Current results in the project include a literature study, a list of domain requirements for context-aware well-being systems and a reference architecture and descriptions for two demonstrators within the COMMIT SWELL project. From literature, we found that current methods for requirements engineering in this domain are either too high, or too low level, preventing proper reuse of artifacts in the next phase of the design process, as well as the need for high levels of both domain and system modeling expertise. Furthermore, we found that tool support model-driven development of context-aware well-being applications is currently lacking. Future research will initially focus on the specific requirements found in the context-aware application domain. After this, we will be looking at the link between specific requirements and architectural components, and whether this link exists uni-directionally or bi-directionally. Finally, we will be investigating if automatic alignment between requirements and architecture can be achieved

An application of augmented MDA for the extended healthcare enterprise

Mobile health systems extend the enterprise computing system of the healthcare provider by bringing services to the patient any time and anywhere. We propose a methodology for the development of such extended enterprise computing systems which applies a model-driven design and development approach augmented with formal validation and verification to address quality and correctness and to support model transformation. At the University of Twente we develop context aware m-health systems based on Body Area Networks (BANs). A set of deployed BANs are supported by a server. We refer to this distributed system as a BAN System. Development of such distributed m-health systems requires a sound software engineering approach and this is what we target with the proposed methodology. The methodology is illustrated with reference to modelling activities targeted at real implementations. BAN implementations are being trialled in a number of clinical settings including epilepsy management and management of chronic pain