Applying Flow-based Programming Methodology to Data-driven Applications Development for Smart Environments

This paper describes initial results of applying the Flow-based Programming methodology to developing data-driven applications for smart environments. This paradigm recently gained popularity in creating concurrent data-driven applications in a wider domain of distributed systems. We investigate this approach applied to the smart environment applications domain and compare it to the Object-Oriented approach typically used in the framework of SOA-based middlewares for the Internet of Things. Our preliminary results show that the Flow-based Programming approach leads to a clear transformation of the design architecture into the software implementation, speeds up the development process, and increases code reuse and maintainability. Keywords–Flow-based programming; data flow; data-driven application; smart environment; software engineering.