xecution environment, is widely recognized as [...]]]> To fully enable the great potential of service provisioning scenarios considering a growing diversity of users, constant Internet access and several devices, context-awareness, known as the ability to provide services with full awareness of current e

xecution environment, is widely recognized as one of the cornerstones to build modern mobile and ubiquitous systems.

Service adaptation is triggered by received context data: hence, context data have to be timely delivered to let services promptly adapt to the current execution context. However, the middleware has to transparently manage and route huge amounts of context data, while ensuring timely delivery to mobile nodes: especially in wide-area mobile networks, that can lead to non-negligible overhead, thus hindering both system scalability and reliability.

Existing systems already exploit contextual attributes to trigger management functions and to adapt services. For instance, Google and Facebook dynamically adapt to the current characteristics of mobile devices, Web clients, and connectivity (such as the available bandwidth).

By considering mainly four context dimensions: computing, physical, time and user, different context-aware behaviors can be realized to adapt services so to make them satisfactory for final user and to fit current execution environment characteristics. Toward this goal, the quality of the context data is a fundamental issue since it can compromise the correctness of adaptation operations.

Although many benefits can be provided with context-aware adaptation, still, an in-depth analysis of the context data distribution is missing. Starting from the core assumption that only effective and efficient context data distribution can pave the way to the deployment of truly context-aware services, Bellavista et al. (2012) published a paper aiming at putting together current research efforts to derive an holistic view of the existing literature. They presented a unified architectural model and a new taxonomy for context data distribution, by considering and comparing a large number of solutions.

BELLAVISTA, P., CORRADI, A., FANELLI, M., AND FOSCHINI, L. (2012). A Survey of Context Data Distribution for Mobile Ubiquitous Systems. 2012. ACM Comput. Surv. 44, 4 (August 2012)

tage of a direct contact with the [...]]]> Serenoa joint paper was presented at LREC’12 conference in Istanbul on May 24th, 2012 by Dr. Javier Caminero, the project coordinator.
The presentation took place in the “Web Services” session and it was done using a poster, taking in this way advan

tage of a direct contact with the participants in the event.

The participants showed a great interest for the project and considered it very ambitious and interesting. A high number of persons talked to Javier and discussed with him many details of the project.

Javier presenting Serenoa at LREC Conference.

The paper will be available in the conference proceedings at its website: http://www.lrec-conf.org

his work the authors: Kenia Sousa, Jean Vanderdonckt, Brian Henderson-Sellers [...]]]> We are glad to inform that the paper entitled “Evaluating a graphical notation for modelling software development methodologies” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Visual Languages & Computing (Volume 23, Issue 4, Pages 195-212). In t

his work the authors: Kenia Sousa, Jean Vanderdonckt, Brian Henderson-Sellers and Cesar Gonzalez-Perez, evaluated a graphical notation for modelling software development methodologies. As such, they demonstrate the use of graphical aspects for sharing knowledge among stakeholders responsible for documenting information, understanding and re-using it. The paper emphasizes the importance of having a common graphical notation for creating, using and disseminating information for larger audiences.

By using a cognitive dimensions framework, they performed a standard evaluation of elements and diagrams of a notation proposed to support the ISO/IEC 24744 methodology metamodel standard, considering the trade-offs across dimensions. The main contributions of this work consist in: improving the enactment diagram to facilitate the organization of processes according to a visual timeline, improving action diagrams by adding further details, specifying goals’ types, improving the legibility of the diagrams.

More detailed information about the paper can be retrieved online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045926X12000237

Carmen Rodríguez, Jean Vanderdonckt, Fabio Paternò, Joerg Rett, Dave Raggett, Jean-Loup Comeliau and [...]]]> The paper entitled ‘The SERENOA Project: Multidimensional Context-Aware Adaptation of Service Front-Ends’ submitted to the LREC Conference 2012, was approved and it will be presented by Javier Caminero. This paper is authored by Javier Caminero, Mari

Carmen Rodríguez, Jean Vanderdonckt, Fabio Paternò, Joerg Rett, Dave Raggett, Jean-Loup Comeliau and Ignacio Marín.

The LREC (Language Resources and Evaluation) Conference will be held in Istanbul (Turkey) from 21st to 27th May. The aim of LREC is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art, explore new R&D directions and emerging trends, exchange information regarding LRs and their applications, evaluation methodologies and tools, ongoing and planned activities, industrial uses and needs, requirements coming from the e-society, both with respect to policy issues and to technological and organisational ones. Further information can be retrieved at LREC website.

The paper describes Serenoa project motivates the work on multi-dimensional context-aware adaptation, presents the methodologies proposed by the project, i.e. CADS, CARF, CARFO, describes the Serenoa laguages (ASFE-DL and AA-DL), defines the architecture of the project and its modules. Besides this, some future venues and application scenarios are presented.