SECTION 3: CONTEXT-AWARE MOBILE SERVICES AND SERVICE-ORIENTED

ARCHITECTURES
Chapter 7: Employing Context Information and Semantics to Advance Responsiveness in Service
Composition
Survey:
The idea of context-aware services has been around for a long time. The rise of user mobility enabled by wellequipped mobile devices, increasing interconnectedness and available service platforms such as the mobile Web
offers new possibilities for context-aware computing, but, at the same time, produces a number of novel
challenges. In this chapter, the authors observe current approaches in this active research area, and identify the
respective challenges, achievements, and trends. The authors also extend the notion of context-aware services
by considering service composition approaches, and present a middleware aiming at the autonomic and contextaware provision of services in mobile peer-to-peer networks. In this regard special attention is paid to a
semantic blackboard concept to cache and disseminate context data and a context-aware service composition
approach in terms of the identified trends and challenges
In this document we have discussed some of the basic developments in the area of context-aware mobile
service composition. We based our considerations on the identification of three trends with respect to contextaware service provision in mobile environments. First, the enhanced service and device capabilities offered
today are increasingly exploited, but their full potential still remains untapped. Second, semantics are
increasingly applied for description purposes providing multiple benefits such as the inference of implicit
knowledge. Third, mobility aspects are especially incorporated not only to deal with particular requirements,
but also to take explicit advantage of the characteristics. By addressing these three trends we have extended the
view from single services to the process of combining services from different devices. We started from the
general definition of service composition processes to reach a description of ideas for a middleware approach
that particularly allows for the use of context information. The focus was put on a best-effort approach of
selecting and executing services in a context-aware manner. Finally, our depiction of future trends and
challenges in this area highlights the need for further research to make the vision of pervasive and seamless
context-aware service composition real. However, the ultimate success of mobile context-aware service
composition processes, as assumed here, strongly depends on the economic benefits which call for appropriate
business models and a broadly comprehensive approach that directly addresses and adapts to user community
needs. Apart from this, regard for privacy aspects is a crucial factor in gaining widespread user acceptance as
users should not lose control over applications of their own data.
Chapter 8: A Methodology for the Design, Development and Validation of Adaptive and Context-Aware
Mobile Services
Survey:
The authors present a holistic approach for the efficient design, implementation, and validation of contextaware mobile services. The according concepts have been developed within the PLASTIC project which
devises a methodology based on model-to-model transformations to be applied at different stages of the service
lifecycle. Starting from a conceptual model, these models reflect characteristic properties of the mobile service
under development such as context information. For the implementation of the service, a middleware suite then
is used which comprises a set of constituents which significantly simplify and shorten the mobile services
development cycle. The authors focus on demonstrating the concepts in terms of mobile business-to-business
field services as opposed to business-to-consumer services. Here through the methodology and tools the
dynamicity can be significantly enhanced. By using the contained adaptation mechanism, service specifications
(static by nature) can be qualified to deal with additional information (e.g., context) needed for achieving a
better quality of service and usability.
The vision of PLASTIC is that users in the B3G era should be provided with a variety of application services
exploiting the networks diversity and richness, without requiring systematic availability of an integrated
network infrastructure. In order to significantly ease the development, deployment, on-the-fly adaptation and
testing of such services, the PLASTIC platform contributes three core ingredients for this, namely a model-to-

model transformations based design approach covering nearly the entire service lifecycle, a configurable
middleware suite comprising communication primitives and advanced services and techniques for on-line and
off-line testing of services. The chapter presented the complete methodology and its application on a real ebusiness scenario in the area of Field Service Management (FSM) solutions. Specifically, we demonstrated how
PLASTIC can be used to implement multiple techniques for dispatching issues to field workers across B3G
networks.
Chapter 9: Bridging the Gap between Mobile Application Contexts and Semantic Web Resources
Survey:
Context-awareness is highly desired, particularly in highly dynamic mobile environments. Semantic Web
Services (SWS) address context-adaptation by enabling the automatic discovery of distributed Web services
based on comprehensive semantic capability descriptions. Even though the appropriateness of resources in
mobile settings is strongly dependent on the current situation, SWS technology does not explicitly encourage
the representation of situational contexts. Therefore, whereas SWS technology supports the allocation of
resources, it does not entail the discovery of appropriate SWS representations for a given situational context.
Moreover, describing the complex notion of a specific situation by utilizing symbolic SWS representation
facilities is costly, prone to ambiguity issues and may never reach semantic completeness. In fact, since not any
real-world situation completely equals another, a potentially infinite set of situation parameters has to be
matched to a finite set of semantically defined SWS resource descriptions to enable context-adaptability. To
overcome these issues, the authors propose Mobile Situation Spaces (MSS) which enable the description of
situation characteristics as members in geometrical vector spaces following the idea of Conceptual Spaces (CS).
Semantic similarity between situational contexts is calculated in terms of their Euclidean distance within a
MSS. Extending merely symbolic SWS descriptions with context information on a conceptual level through
MSS enables similarity-based matchmaking between real-world situation characteristics and predefined
resource representations as part of SWS descriptions. To prove the feasibility, the authors provide a proof-ofconcept prototype which applies MSS to support context-adaptation across distinct mobile situations.
In this paper, we proposed an approach to support fuzzy, similarity-based matchmaking between real-world
situation parameters in mobile settings and predefined semantic situation descriptions by incorporating
semantic context information on a conceptual level into symbolic SWS descriptions based on Conceptual
Situation Spaces. Given a particular mobile situation, defined by parameters such as the location and device of
the user, the most appropriate resources, whether data or services, are discovered based on the semantic
similarity, calculated in terms of the Euclidean distance, between the real-world situation and predefined
resource descriptions as part of SWS representations. Even though we refer to the SWS framework WSMO in
this paper, we would like to highlight, that our approach could be applied to other SWS reference ontologies
such as OWLS (OWL-S Coalition. 2004). Consequently, by aligning CSS to established SWS technologies, the
expressiveness of symbolic SWS standards is extended with context information on a conceptual level
described in terms of natural quality dimensions to enable fuzzy context-aware delivery of information
resources at runtime. Whereas current SWS frameworks address the allocation of distributed services for a
given (semantically) well-described task, Mobile Situation Spaces particularly address the similarity-based
discovery of the most appropriate SWS task representation for a given situation. To prove the feasibility of our
approach, a proof-of-concept prototype application was presented, which applies the MSS to enable contextadaptive resource discovery in a mobile setting. However, although our approach applies CS to solve SWSrelated issues such as the symbol grounding problem, several criticisms still have to be taken into account.
Whereas defining situational contexts, respectively members within a given MSS, appears to be a
straightforward process of assigning specific values to each quality dimension, the definition of the MSS itself
is not trivial at all and strongly dependent on individual perspectives and subjective appraisals. Whereas the
semantics of an object are grounded to metrics in geometrical vector spaces within a MSS, the quality
dimensions itself are subject to ones perspective and interpretation what may lead to ambiguity issues. With
regard to this, MSS do not appear to solve the symbol grounding issue but to shift it from the process of
describing instances to the definition of a MSS. Moreover, distinct semantic interpretations and conceptual
groundings of each dimension may be applied by different individuals. Apart from that, whereas the size and
resolution of a MSS is indefinite, defining a reasonable space for a specific domain and purpose may become a
challenging task. Nevertheless, distance calculation as major contribution of the MSS approach, not only makes

sense for quantifiable parameters but also relies on the fact, that parameters are described in the same
geometrical space. Consequently, CS-based approaches, such as MSS, may be perceived as step forward but do
not fully solve the issues related to symbolic Semantic Web (Services)-based knowledge representations.
Hence, future work has to deal with the aforementioned issues. For instance, we foresee to enable adjustment of
prominence values to quality dimensions of a specific space to be accomplished by a user him/herself, in order
to most appropriately suit his/her specific priorities and preferences regarding the resource allocation process,
since the prioritization of dimensions is a highly individual and subjective process. Nevertheless, further
research will be concerned with the application of our approach to further domain-specific situation settings.
Chapter 10: Adaptive Resource and Service Management in a Mobile-Enabled Environment
Survey:
Due to its nature, a mobile-enabled environment is very dynamic: reachable resources and services change very
often. Users hardly know which resources they can exploit and which services they may require. In such a
context, a technical support which identifies the available resources and services and indicates which resource
is the best one to execute a service would be very helpful. This chapter proposes an adaptive solution to achieve
these issues. Adaptivity is related to the fact that besides searching for the reachable resources or services, this
approach proposes the most appropriate one for the current request by exploiting additional information about
users, resources and services. Moreover, it ensures that services are delivered with the qualities requested and
expected by the users. In the scientific literature adaptivity is exploited for functionality reasons (i.e., a system
is not able to do what it was supposed to do) or for performance reasons (i.e., a system is not able to ensure the
qualities of the services expected by the users or there is a better configuration for a given task). A challenging
issue of adaptivity is the identification and design of the knowledge useful for the adaptation process and how
this knowledge is exploited at run-time especially in a highly dynamic environment. This chapter proposes an
approach which models the adaptation knowledge through reflective entities, qualities and properties, the
management of the adaptation knowledge through views, the decision support through strategies, and the
management of the functional and non-functional elements through managers.
Sterling and Juan assert that future software systems will be adaptive (Sterling & Juan, 2005). From the works
available in the scientific literature this affirmation seems to be true. More and more software engineers focus
their attention on addressing adaptivity in the systems they are developing. Moreover, adaptivity is requested in
a wide range of application domains which regard delivery of services in heterogeneous mobile-enabled
environments built of various types of devices, networks, users, preferences and contexts. Currently, there is no
common and well-established definition of adaptivity (Zadeh, 1963). This may be considered a consequence of
the generality feature of adaptivity, as well as to its emerging status. Essentially, adaptivity consists in
performing structural and behavioral changes in a system as a result of other changes occurred inside or outside
a system. There is no further specification about these changes: what type of changes should be done, when
should be done, how to do them at run-time, or who or what decides what to change, which is the trigger of
adaptation. Moreover, there is no design support for adaptivity (e.g., tools, models, verification and validation
criteria). These affirmations are sustained also by the various types of possible adaptation: structure,
architecture and behavior (Gorton Liu & Trivedi, 2007). Structure adaptation regards the changes made in the
application components (e.g., a method signature). Architecture adaptation deals with the changes in the
structure of components and their interaction. Behavioral adaptation focuses on the changes in the execution of
existing components in a non-intrusive way (e.g., change of the configuration of a component). This leads to
the conclusion that adaptivity is a complex task which regards various aspects of a system including
architectural, structural and functional information. Furthermore, adaptivity addresses both for functional and
non-functional aspects. Adaptivity is an open research issues. Currently, scientists are trying to identify its
possible usages and specifications. In this chapter, attention has been focused on the representation and
management of the knowledge exploited in the adaptation process in a mobile-enabled environment. Reflection
plays an important role in the observation and control of the knowledge exploited at run time to achieve
adaptivity. To improve the management of the reflective knowledge, views have been introduced. Decision
support is implemented through strategies. Separation of concerns is a fundamental aspect in adaptive systems:
adaptive knowledge should be separated from the functional and domain specific knowledge, as well as the
adaptive process should be separated from the application business process. The issues raised by serviceoriented mobile enabled systems are complex because they claim for architectural, behavioural as well as

context adaptation. Architectural adaptation is needed because of the intrinsic nature of the mobility feature.
Users and devices change their location hence the architecture of a system changes. Behavioural adaptation
may be required when users change location and the reachable services change. Due to the modification of the
users location also the context may change. Hence, context adaptation is needed. Adaptivity requires additional
software for the representation of its related meaningful information and for the run-time decision support. This
increases not only the size of the software but also its complexity. Hence, the advantages offered by adaptivity
should overcome these problems. Software engineers have focused their attention on how to exploit adaptivity
to improve the systems functionalities in terms of automating tasks previously done off-line and to minimize
the interaction between a system and its administrator at run-time. Further, research should focus also on the
performances of an adaptive system in that the overhead introduced by adaptivity should be overcome by its
benefits. As mentioned in (McKinley Sadjadi Kasten & Cheng, 2004), further work related to the assurance,
security, interoperability and decision making in adaptive systems is required. Assurance regards the
correctness of the changes needed by adaptivity. This is tightly related to the conflicts which may occur and to
the priority of the issues addressed through adaptivity. While assurance addresses the integrity of a system,
security regards its protection from malicious entities. Changes should not alter the security characteristics of a
system. Adaptive distributed systems allow the adaptivity of components, as well as of its layers and platforms.
Attention should be focused on maintaining the interoperability among the components and inside the entire
system. Decision making is a complex task due to the fact that adaptive systems work in heterogeneous
environments where context changes may occur very often. Systems must act autonomously, performing
modifications to better fit the current context while preventing damage or loss of services.
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