SUMMARY Although the idea of context‐awareness was introduced almost two decades ago, few mobile software applications are available today that can sense and adapt to their run‐time environment. The development of context‐aware and self‐adaptive applications is complex and few developers have experience in this area. On the basis of several demonstrators built by the joint European research project MUSIC, this paper describes typical context and adaptation features relevant for the development of context‐aware and self‐adaptive mobile applications. We explain how the demonstrators were realised using the open‐source platform MUSIC and present the feedback of the developers of these demonstrators. The main contribution of this paper is to show how the development complexity of context‐aware and self‐adaptive mobile applications can be mastered by using an adaptation framework such as MUSIC. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract Driven by the emergence of mobile and pervasive computing there is a growing demand for context‐aware software systems that can dynamically adapt to their run‐time environment. We present the results of project MADAM that has delivered a comprehensive solution for the development and operation of context‐aware, self‐adaptive applications. The main contributions of MADAM are (a) a sophisticated middleware that supports the dynamic adaptation of component‐based applications, and (b) an innovative model‐driven development methodology that is based on abstract adaptation models and corresponding model‐to‐code transformations. MADAM has demonstrated the viability of a general, integrated approach to application‐level adaptation. We discuss our experiences with two real‐world case studies that were built using the MADAM approach. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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.

Adaptive systems are able to adapt their properties and resource requirements at runtime in response to dynamically varying user needs and resource constraints. With the emergence of mobile and service oriented computing, such variation is becoming increasingly common, and the need for adaptivity is increasing accordingly. Software product line engineering has proved itself as an efficient way to deal with varying user needs and resource constraints. In this paper we present an approach to building adaptive systems based on product line oriented techniques such as variability modeling and component based architectures. By representing the product line architecture at runtime, we are able to delegate much of the complexity of adaptation to a reusable adaptation platform. To validate our approach we have built a prototype adaptation platform and developed a few pilot applications exploiting the platform to achieve adaptivity

Organized reuse of software components have been employed for several decades in Garex, a Norwegian company producing customized voice communication control switch systems. Through a process encouraging reuse, a large number of highly parameterized components have been crafted. However, the current manual approach to instantiating and connecting components is very complex and time-consuming, and increasing parts of the development costs are spent on this task. Through participation in the PROTEUS project, some practical work has been undertaken to assess the use of a configuration language to support system instantiation and evolution. The configuration language allows the description of components and systems, their properties and potential variability. By using the powerful intensional mechanisms for system binding and generation which are provided by the language and its supporting tool set, concise high-level descriptions for system instantiation are achieved.

Generatingcode automatically from the design level increases product quality and productivity but also facilitates maintenance and evolution by limiting changes to the