Meeting the software engineering challenges of interacting with dynamic and ad-hoc computing environments

Gedenryd, Henrik; Holland, Simon and Morse, David (2002). Meeting the software engineering challenges of interacting with dynamic and ad-hoc computing environments. Technical Report 2002/08; Department of Computing, The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.00015ff9

Abstract

We argue that the normal circumstances for pervasive computing technologies will be dynamic and ad-hoc settings, in that the available technical resources will evolve and/or change frequently, rather than having been installed by design. We describe a second-generation software architecture for Ambient Combination [14], engineered to meet the software engineering challenges of achieving transparency of use under such conditions. The architecture uses advanced software composition techniques closely related to aspect-oriented programming, along with computational reflection, to represent domain objects and their properties at a problem-oriented, high conceptual level. This architecture achieves a very good separation of concerns, while also providing the flexibility and extensibility needed to address the open-ended nature of these situations. This also enables the architectural building blocks to be flexible distributed across different machine configurations in an uncomplicated and robust manner.