Middleware for reactive components: An integrated use of context, roles, and event based coordination

The proliferation of mobile devices and new software creates a need for computing environments that are able to react to environmental (context) changes. To date insufficient attention has been paid to the issues of defining an integrated component-based environment which is able to describe complex computational context and handle different types of adaptation for a variety of new and existing pervasive enterprise applications. In this paper a run-time environment for pervasive enterprise systems is proposed. The associated architecture uses a component based modelling paradigm, and is held together by an event-based mechanism which provides significant flexibility in dynamic system configuration and adaptation. The approach used to describe and manage context information captures descriptions of complex user, device and application context including enterprise roles and role policies. In addition, the coordination language used to coordinate components of the architecture that manage context, adaptation and policy provides the flexibility needed in pervasive computing applications supporting dynamic reconfiguration and a variety of communication paradigms.