Putting Context in Context: The Role and Design of Context Management in a Mobility and Adaptation Enabling Middleware

The operating context of mobile applications and services is constantly changing. In order to achieve higher levels of usability, mobile applications and services need to adapt to changes in context. This paper argues the need for adaptation enabling middleware that simplifies the development of context aware adaptive applications, and makes it economically and practically feasible to develop such applications. We claim that the traditional approach of simply providing contextual information to applications and let them handle the adaptation can be ineffective. We suggest a holistic approach where context management is an integral part of a more comprehensive adaptation enabling middleware. This paper describes the role and the design of the context management component in such a middleware architecture. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated in a scenario where proof-of-concept implementations have been developed and evaluated.