Dynamic links for mobile connected context-sensitive systems

Abstract

The current generation of mobile context-aware applications must respond to a complex collection of changes in the state of the system and in its usage environment. We argue that dynamic links, as used in user interface software for many years, can be extended to support the change-sensitivity necessary for such systems. We describe an implementation of dynamic links in the Paraglide Anaesthetist's Clinical Assistant, a mobile context-aware system to help anaesthetists perform pre- and post-operative patient assessment. In particular, our implementation treats dynamic links as first class objects. They can be stored in XML documents and transmitted around a network. This allows our system to find and understand new sources of data at run-time.