XCML: A Runtime Representation for the Context Modelling Language

The context modelling language (CML), derived from object role modeling (ORM), is a powerful approach for capturing the pertinent object types and relationships between those types in context-aware applications. Its support for data quality metrics, context histories and fact type classifications make it an ideal design tool for context-aware systems. However, CML currently lacks a suitable representation for exchanging context models and instances in distributed systems. A runtime representation can be used by context-aware applications and supporting infrastructure to exchange context information and models between distributed components, and it can be used as the storage representation when relational database facilities are not present. This paper shows the benefits of using CML for modelling context as compared to commonly used RDF/OWL-based context models, shows that translations of CML to RDF or OWL are lossy, discusses existing techniques for serialising ORM models, and presents an alternative XML-based representation for CML called XCML