A development framework and methodology for self-adapting applications in ubiquitous computing environments

Today software is the main enabler of many of the appliances and devices omnipresent in our daily life and important for our well being and work satisfaction. It is expected that the software works as intended, and that the software always and everywhere provides us with the best possible utility. This paper discusses the motivation, technical approach, and innovative results of the MUSIC project. MUSIC provides a comprehensive software development framework for applications that operate in ubiquitous and dynamic computing environments and adapt to context changes. Context is understood as any information about the user needs and operating environment which vary dynamically and have an impact on design choices. MUSIC supports several adaptation mechanisms and offers a model-driven application development approach supported by a sophisticated middleware that facilitates the dynamic and automatic adaptation of applications and services based on a clear separation of business logic, context awareness and adaptation concerns. The main contribution of this paper is a holistic, coherent presentation of the motivation, design, implementation, and evaluation of the MUSIC development framework and methodology.

► We have developed and tested a framework for building self-adaptive applications.
► The framework adopts an externalized approach to self-adaptation.
► Our approach supports a clear separation of application and variability modeling.
► It supports several adaptation techniques including dynamically discovered services.
► Main issues for future work are runtime overhead and scalability.