Context-aware Self Adapting Systems: a Ground for the Cooperation of Data, Software, and Services

Modern technologies related to Pervasive and Ubiquitous computing require software to self adapt to different operating environments and situations, in a word, to different contexts. Several approaches have been proposed to solve this problem both in the Data Management and in the Programming Languages communities, however these efforts have proceeded along separate paths with little, if no interaction. We claim that there are complementary features which can bring different paradigms in the Data Management and Programming Languages domains to a fruitful cooperation in building Adaptive Systems. In fact, data collected by sensor networks can be directly used by application programs as well as used to determine the context the application is working in, so attaining a context-aware behavior obtained by triggering the execution of specific program modules or the connection to relevant web services. In this paper, we use the PerLa pervasive data management language and JCop Context-Oriented Programming Java language extension to show the feasibility of this approach applied to the classical case of keeping an office room climate comfortable under several environmental constraints and to the management of a ski resort.

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