Open Systems Laboratory at Illinois

Towards context-aware web applications

By Po-Hao Chang and Gul Agha. In DAIS, volume 4531 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 239–252. Springer, 2007.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72883-2_18

Abstract

In order to guarantee certain levels of QoS, a Web application needs to adapt itself to different execution contexts. However, because of the lack of coordination support in Web platforms, service providers respond to the challenge by simply providing multiple versions of a Web application, one for each context. We argue this top-down approach is neither efficient nor scalable: developing a context-specific application requires considerable effort and expertise while the ever-changing Internet never stops generating interesting contexts which can be exploited for better deployment. As an alternative, we propose a three-layer, bottom-up approach to building context-aware Web applications. At the bottom layer, we characterize a context-specific Web application with a particular component distribution plan which provides details for composing individual objects. In the middle layer, recursively defined configurations provide a bridge which relates high-level context features to low-level component distribution properties, where a configuration is a combination of configurations and/or component distribution properties. At the top level, a context management system selects desirable configurations according to the execution contexts.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{conf/dais/ChangA07,
    author = "Chang, Po-Hao and Agha, Gul",
    editor = "Indulska, Jadwiga and Raymond, Kerry",
    title = "Towards Context-Aware Web Applications",
    booktitle = "DAIS",
    crossref = "conf/dais/2007",
    ee = "http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72883-2_18",
    keywords = "web computing, software engineering, p2p",
    pages = "239-252",
    year = "2007",
}

@proceedings{conf/dais/2007,
    editor = "Indulska, Jadwiga and Raymond, Kerry",
    title = "Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems, 7th
             IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference, DAIS 2007, Paphos, Cyprus,
             June 6-8, 2007, Proceedings",
    isbn = "978-3-540-72881-8",
    publisher = "Springer",
    series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",
    volume = "4531",
    year = "2007",
}