A platform based on web services for context middleware integration

The development of ubiquitous applications relies on the support of context provision middleware to achieve contextual information useful for the application. Each context provision middleware adopts a different context model as well as specific APIs for accessing to the context data. Typically ubiquitous applications need to interact with different context middleware in order to access a range of contextual information. Aiming at to facilitate the development of applications in such heterogeneous scenery, we propose OpenCOPI (Open COntext Platform Integration), a platform based on Web services that integrates different context middleware, providing a unified service of context and a mechanism of semantic composition where applications are consumers of services and context provision middleware are providers of context services. To provide platform independence and simple integration with context provision middleware, OpenCOPI is based on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and on Semantic Web technologies. This paper describes OpenCOPI and presents a case study that illustrates its usage in a ubiquitous scenario.