Email this article Context-oriented Software Development
Abstract
Context-oriented programming is an emerging technique that enables dynamic behaviour variation based on context changes. In COP, context can be handled directly at the code level by enriching the business logic of the application with code fragments responsible for performing context manipulation, thus providing the application code with the required adaptive behavior. Unfortunately, the whole set of sensors, effectors, and adaptation processes is mixed with the application code, which often leads to poor scalability and maintainability. In addition, the developers have to surround all probable behavior inside the source code. As an outcome, the anticipated adjustment is restricted to the amount of code stubs on hand offered by the creators. Context-driven adaptation requires dynamic composition of context-dependent parts. This can be achieved trough the support of a component model that encapsulates the context-dependent functionality and decouples them from the application’s core-functionality. The complexity behind modeling the context-dependent functionality lies in the fact that they can occur separately or in any combination, and cannot be encapsulated because of their impact across all the software modules. Before encapsulating crosscutting context-dependent functionality into a software module, the developers must first identify them in the requirements documents. This requires a formal development paradigm for analyzing the context-dependent functionality; and a component model, which modularizes their concerns. COCA-MDA is proposed in this article as model driven architecture for constructing self-adaptive application from a context oriented component model.
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References
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