Managing Distributed Context Models Requires Adaptivity too

Mobile devices changed the way how software is developed fundamentally, because the changing context in which those devices are used, influences the requirements of apps running on those devices. Hence, mobile apps must provide means for self-adaptation. With upcoming technologies like wearables, people will carry a whole range of heterogeneous devices, sensing different aspects of their owner’s context. Thus, self-adaptive systems have to collaborate, to combine their individual capabilities. To do so, they must incorporate strategies for the exchange of context information. The realization of such a distributed infrastructure requires to decide when, how and which parts of context models shall be exchanged, where they should be managed and who initiates the exchange. In this paper we show that for each aspect, different implementation strategies exist. Furthermore, we show that the properties of those strategies depended on (a) static and (b) dynamic requirements. Therefore, the management of distributed context models must be prepared for variability and adaptation. We present a prototypical implementation following the Smart Application Grids approach in the domain of Blended Interactive Spaces and highlight research questions w.r.t. selfadaptive distributed context models.