Architecture for Adaptive Mobile Applications
31 Oct 2013-Vol. 5, Iss: 5, pp 197-210
TL;DR: This paper is developing the components of a flexible and general-purpose runtime infrastructure to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of such adaptive mobile applications and gives an overview of the intersection of the areas of software architecture and mobile applications.
Abstract: Mobile computing is a relatively new field. While the challenges arising from mobility and the limitations of the portable devices are relatively well understood, there is no consensus yet as to what should be done to address these challenges. A comprehensive solution has to address many different aspects, such as the issue of dynamically changing bandwidth, the power, computational, and other limitations of the portable devices, or the varying availability of services in different environments. In this paper, we present our architecture for such adaptive mobile applications. We motivated the architecture by classifying likely mobile applications and identified common properties. The architecture intends to be more general than previous work with respect to adaptability, flexibility, and user mobility. We developed various pieces of the overall architecture and collected some preliminary experience with adaptive mobile applications. We give an overview of the intersection of the areas of software architecture and mobile applications. We consider the mobile applications, which represent the computing functionality designed to migrate across hardware devices at runtime and execute on mobile hardware platforms, and the mobile systems, which are computing applications that include mobile software and hardware elements. We are developing the components of a flexible and general-purpose runtime infrastructure to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of such adaptive mobile applications. We will evaluate our infrastructure by implementing a number of wireless applications and by building simulation tools to validate the scalability of our architecture when considering metropolitan and provincial cellular systems.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: It is argued that today's mobile software, with its rich ecosystem of apps, would have not been possible without the pioneering advances in software architecture research in the decade that preceded it.
27 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, a general architectural model of mobile applications is introduced, which can be used to identify and organize essential patterns in mobile-application design process, and the model is employed to construct a high-level architecture of a particular application.
Abstract: Software companies adopt patterns as a means to improve architecture and design practices. During recent years, the application of patterns has extended from general software applications to specific problem domains. In a new domain, suitable patterns fitting to the essential design problems in the new context need to be identified. In this paper, we introduce a general architectural model of mobile applications, which can be used to identify and organise essential patterns in mobile-application design process. This model is employed to construct a high-level architecture of a particular application. For each component of the architecture, the model may suggest candidate patterns that can be used for elaborating the component. Subsequently, the results of the design process are used iteratively to further develop the architectural model. The presented model is verified and tested by employing it to address the design problem of supporting multiple user interfaces in a real mobile application product.
12 citations
14 Sep 2020
TL;DR: Personalization to the different users’ characteristics and run-time adaptation to their changing needs and context provide a great opportunity for getting users continuously engaged and active, eventually leading to better physical and mental conditions.
Abstract: A wealth of e-Health mobile apps are available for many purposes, such as life style improvement, mental coaching, etc. The interventions, prompts, and encouragements of e-Health apps sometimes take context into account (e.g., previous interactions or geographical location of the user), but they still tend to be rigid, e.g., by using fixed rule sets or being not sufficiently tailored towards individuals. Personalization to the different users’ characteristics and run-time adaptation to their changing needs and context provide a great opportunity for getting users continuously engaged and active, eventually leading to better physical and mental conditions.
6 citations
01 Jan 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, a reference architecture for enabling AI-based personalization and self-adaptation of mobile apps for e-Health is presented, which makes use of a dedicated goal model and multiple MAPE loops operating at different levels of granularity and for different purposes.
Abstract: Within software engineering, social sustainability is the dimension of sustainability that focuses on the “support of current and future generations to have the same or greater access to social resources by pursuing social equity.” An important domain that strives to achieve social sustainability is e-Health, and more recently e-Health mobile apps.A wealth of e-Health mobile apps is available for many purposes, such as lifestyle improvement and mental coaching. The interventions, prompts, and encouragements of e-Health apps sometimes take context into account (e.g., previous interactions or geographical location of the user), but they still tend to be rigid, e.g., apps use fixed sets of rules or they are not sufficiently tailored toward individuals’ needs. Personalization to the different users’ characteristics and run-time adaptation to their changing needs and context provide a great opportunity for getting users continuously engaged and active, eventually leading to better physical and mental conditions. This chapter presents a reference architecture for enabling AI-based personalization and self-adaptation of mobile apps for e-Health. The reference architecture makes use of a dedicated goal model and multiple MAPE loops operating at different levels of granularity and for different purposes. The proposed reference architecture is instantiated in the context of a fitness-based mobile application and exemplified through a series of typical usage scenarios extracted from our industrial collaborations.
6 citations
Book•
19 Mar 2018TL;DR: This data indicates that mobile search has gradually emerged as a key method with which users seek online information and is likely to be a major factor in the development of smart personal devices and their applications.
Abstract: With the rapid development of mobile Internet and smart personal devices in recent years, mobile search has gradually emerged as a key method with which users seek online information. In addition, cross-device search also has been regarded recently as an important research topic. As more mobile applications (APPs) integrate search functions, a user's mobile search behavior on different APPs becomes more significant. This book provides a systematic review of current mobile search analysis and studies user mobile search behavior from several perspectives, including mobile search context, APP usage, and different devices. Two different user experiments to collect user behavior data were conducted. Then, through the data from user mobile phone usage logs in natural settings, we analyze the mobile search strategies employed and offer a context-based mobile search task collection, which then can be used to evaluate the mobile search engine. In addition, we combine mobile search with APP usage to give more in-depth analysis, such as APP transition in mobile search and follow-up actions triggered by mobile search. The study, combining the mobile search with APP usage, can contribute to the interaction design of APPs, such as the search recommendation and APP recommendation. Addressing the phenomenon of users owning more smart devices today than ever before, we focus on user cross device search behavior. We model the information preparation behavior and information resumption behavior in cross-device search and evaluate the search performance in cross-device search. Research on mobile search behaviors across different devices can help to understand online user information behavior comprehensively and help users resume their search tasks on different devices.
5 citations
References
More filters
Book•
01 Jan 1997TL;DR: This second edition of this book reflects the new developments in the field and new understanding of the important underpinnings of software architecture with new case studies and the new understanding both through new chapters and through additions to and elaboration of the existing chapters.
Abstract: From the Book:
Our goals for the first edition were threefold. First, we wanted to show through authentic case studies actual examples of software architectures solving real-world problems. Second, we wanted to establish and show the strong connection between an architecture and an organization's business goals. And third, we wanted to explain the importance of software architecture in achieving the quality goals for a system.
Our goals for this second edition are the same, but the passage of time since the writing of the first edition has brought new developments in the field and new understanding of the important underpinnings of software architecture. We reflect the new developments with new case studies and the new understanding both through new chapters and through additions to and elaboration of the existing chapters.
Architecture analysis, design, reconstruction, and documentation have all had major developments since the first edition. Architecture analysis has developed into a mature field with industrial-strength methods. This is reflected by a new chapter about the architecture tradeoff analysis method (ATAM). The ATAM has been adopted by industrial organizations as a technique for evaluating their software architectures.
Architecture design has also had major developments since the first edition. The capturing of quality requirements, the achievement of those requirements through small-scale and large-scale architectural approaches (tactics and patterns, respectively), and a design method that reflects knowledge of how to achieve qualities are all captured in various chapters. Three new chapters treat understanding quality requirements, achieving qualities, and theattribute driven design (ADD) method, respectively.
Architecture reconstruction or reverse engineering is an essential activity for capturing undocumented architectures. It can be used as a portion of a design project, an analysis project, or to provide input into a decision process to determine what to use as a basis for reconstructing an existing system. In the first edition, we briefly mentioned a tool set (Dali) and its uses in the re-engineering context; in in this edition the topic merits its own chapter.
Documenting software architectures is another topic that has matured considerably in the recent past. When the first edition was published, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) was just arriving on the scene. Now it is firmly entrenched, a reality reflected by all-new diagrams. But more important, an understanding of what kind of information to capture about an architecture, beyond what notation to use, has emerged. A new chapter covers architecture documentation.
The understanding of the application of software architecture to enable organizations to efficiently produce a variety of systems based on a single architecture is summarized in a totally rewritten chapter on software product lines. The chapter reinforces the link between architecture and an organization's business goals, as product lines, based around a software architecture, can enable order-of-magnitude improvements in cost, quality, and time to market.
In addition to the architectural developments, the technology for constructing distributed and Web-based systems has become prominent in today's economy. We reflect this trend by updating the World Wide Web chapter, by using Web-based examples for the ATAM chapter and the chapter on building systems from components, by replacing the CORBA case study with one on Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), and by introducing a case study on a wireless EJB system designed to support wearable computers for maintenance technicians.
Finally, we have added a chapter that looks more closely at the financial aspects of architectures. There we introduce a method--the CBAM--for basing architectural decisions on economic criteria, in addition to the technical criteria that we had focused on previously.
As in the first edition, we use the architecture business cycle as a unifying motif and all of the case studies are described in terms of the quality goals that motivated the system design and how the architecture for the system achieves those quality goals.
In this edition, as in the first, we were very aware that our primary audience is practitioners, so we focus on presenting material that has been found useful in many industrial applications, as well as what we expect practice to be in the near future.
We hope that you enjoy reading it at least as much as we enjoyed writing it.
0321154959P12162002
4,991 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe xmiddle, a mobile computing middleware that enables the transparent sharing of XML documents across heterogeneous mobile hosts, allowing on-line and off-line access to data.
Abstract: An increasing number of distributed applications will be written for mobile hosts, such as laptop computers, third generation mobile phones, personal digital assistants, watches and the like. Application engineers have to deal with a new set of problems caused by mobility, such as low bandwidth, context changes or loss of connectivity. During disconnection, users will typically update local replicas of shared data independently from each other. The resulting inconsistent replicas need to be reconciled upon re-connection. To support building mobile applications that use both replication and reconciliation over ad-hoc networks, we have designed xmiddle, a mobile computing middleware. In this paper we describe xmiddle and show how it uses reflection capabilities to allow application engineers to influence replication and reconciliation techniques. xmiddle enables the transparent sharing of XML documents across heterogeneous mobile hosts, allowing on-line and off-line access to data. We describe xmiddle using a collaborative e-shopping case study on mobile clients.
227 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: This book synthesizes and distills information so that the practicing software architect and especially the beginning software architect can fill in the gaps in their understanding of software architecture design.
Abstract: This book synthesizes and distills information so that the practicing software architect, and especially the beginning software architect, can fill in the gaps in their understanding of software architecture design.
132 citations
TL;DR: The six-layer enterprise mobile applications development framework offers a systematic and comprehensive solution to mobile application development and maintenance.
Abstract: Enterprises face several challenges in deploying mobile applications, emanating from features such as location independence, contextualization, and personalization. The six-layer enterprise mobile applications development framework offers a systematic and comprehensive solution to mobile application development and maintenance. The taxonomy of enterprise mobile application are mobile broadcast, mobile information, mobile transaction, mobile operation, mobile collaboration.
105 citations
TL;DR: An integrated architecture-driven framework for modeling, analysis, implementation, deployment, and run-time migration of software systems executing on distributed, mobile, heterogeneous computing platforms is presented and its support for dealing with the challenges posed by both logical and physical mobility is described.
64 citations