Model-Driven Development of Aspectual Pervasive Software Services

Context information is characterized by several qualities that make pervasive services challenging compared to conventional Web services. The additional complexities associated with pervasive services require solid software engineering practices. This paper presents a novel approach based on model-driven development for representing complex crosscutting context-dependent functionality in service interfaces in a modular manner and automating the generation of state machine-based adaptive behavior using model transformations. Using transformations we ensure the correct separation of concerns of the crosscutting context-dependent information at both semi-informal UML modeling and formal behavioral specification levels. A tool applying an effective pipeline of model-to-model and model-to-text transformations has been built and successfully applied to a real-world case study in intelligent transport. The generated context-dependent adaptive behavior and core service behavior for the pervasive services are rigorously verified using formal model checking against specified system properties. An evaluation framework has been established to validate the main methods and tools employed in the study.