Utilising Alternative Application Configurations in Context- and QoS-Aware Mobile Middleware

State-of-the-art dynamic middleware uses information about the environment in order to evaluate alternative configurations of an application and select one according to some criteria. In the context of applications sensitive to Quality of Service, we have identified the need for a platform independent description of configurations that includes non-functional behaviour, and that allows handling of a large number of application configurations. In this paper, we present a modelling principle and a service plan concept, which together represents such a description. The modelling principle and plan concept extend state-of-the-art with i) a model of the alternative configurations that ensure a minimum of reconfiguration steps; ii) a specification that contains information elements of the configuration, dependencies to the environment, and QoS characteristics; and iii) a platform independent specification. In the paper, we also perform a qualitative assessment of our approach, and we describe a proof-of-concept implementation.