System imposed and application compliant adaptations

As more and more inexpensive, small and lightweight computer devices become available, a lot of what were formerly though of as in-office computer related activities are carried out anywhere and anytime. Reading Web news is an example. We can surf the Web at airports, on trains, and even in camp grounds. However, is it possible that more complicated distributed applications, such as scientific computing, multisite video game playing, etc., can be adapted to the mobile environment? More interestingly, how can we achieve this without rewriting the complex applications that are designed for distributed platforms in which resource locations, resource types, network connectivity, and locations of the applications themselves are more stationary and stable than in a mobile distributed environment? Our research focuses on application level context-aware adaptations. In our new application paradigm, mobile applications are a composition of three independent parts: (1) application context which identifies the application itself, such as its location, application type, quality of service constraints, hosting device power limit, etc; (2) functionality of the application, which we call the application's functional behavior; and (3) application adaptation behavior. In traditional distributed applications, it is sufficient to consider only an application's functional behavior, but for mobile applications it is also necessary to be able to adapt to a changing environment. Our research provides a new paradigm to achieve application level adaptations in mobile environment. We also distinguish between two forms of adaptations; imposed adaptations and compliance adaptations.