Modeling Context-Aware Distributed Event-Based Systems

Emerging applications are becoming increasingly dynamic, adaptive and context-aware in areas such as just-in-time location-based m-commerce, situational health monitoring, and dynamic social networking collaboration. Although numerous systems and implementation infrastructures have been proposed to deal with some features of such systems, there is a lack of higher-level modeling abstractions and associated component metamodels that combine dynamic features, adaptation mechanisms, and contextawareness. In this report we propose a metamodel for contextaware distributed event-based systems that supports novel forms of event-based context-aware interactions such as context event schemas, component interfaces that react to context, event and context interactions at the interface level and subscriptions based on both events and context. Our approach also supports requirements for context-aware systems proposed in the literature. The applicability of the approach is illustrated by showing how existing context-aware systems can be modeled using our metamodel.