Ubiquitous Software Engineering: Achievements, Challenges and Beyond

Ubiquitous systems, or simply put Ubiquitous Software, are user-centric complex systems that must simultaneously deal with requirements such as mobility, portability, adaptability, interoperability and context-awareness, among others. In that direction, the last decades presented several Software Engineering techniques like frameworks and middleware, component models, service-oriented architectures and software product lines, all trying to address and diminish the complexity to develop Ubiquitous Software. However, issues regarding the systematic development and proliferation of such software still lay untouched. Thus, it is mandatory to consider them, as well as to come up with production and commercialization models, in order to make the popularization of Ubiquitous Software plausible. Discussing these issues, this paper presents a summary of achievements on the development of Ubiquitous Software in the last decades, challenges ahead and future directions.