Reflective middleware for location-aware application adaptation

Abstract

Today mobile computing is pervasively taking over the traditional desktop computing. Mobile devices are characterized by abrupt and unannounced changes in execution context. The applications running on these devices need to be autonomous and thus dynamically adapt according to the changing context. Existing middleware support for the typical distributed applications is strictly based on component technology. Future mobile applications require highly dynamic and adaptive services from the middleware components i.e. context-aware autonomic adaptation. Traditional middleware do not address this emerging need of wide ranges of mobile applications mainly because of their monolithic and inflexible nature. It is hypothesized that such application adaptation can be achieved through meta-level protocols that can reflectively change the state and behaviors of the system. We integrate Component Technology with our active Meta Object Protocols for enabling mobile applications to become adaptive for different contexts. This paper implements the application adaptation service of this middleware. It specializes the concept of Meta Object Protocols for autonomic adaptation of mobile applications. ActiveMOP provide robust and highly flexible framework for autonomic component development for mobile applications. It proved to be a very simple and powerful way to programmatically develop location-driven applications based on autonomic components. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.