What is Context Reactive Component Interface

Emerging applications are becoming increasingly dynamic, adaptive, and context-aware in areas such as just-in-time, location-based m-commerce; situational health monitoring; and dynamic social networking collaboration. Although numerous systems and implementation infrastructures have been proposed to deal with some features of such systems, there is a lack of higher-level modeling abstractions and associated component metamodels that combine dynamic features, adaptation mechanisms, and context-awareness. In this chapter the authors propose a metamodel for context-aware distributed event-based systems that supports novel forms of event-based context-aware interactions such as context event schemas; component interfaces that react to context, event, and context interactions at the interface level; and subscriptions based on both events and context. The approach also supports requirements for context-aware systems proposed in the literature. The applicability of the approach is illustrated by showing how existing context-aware systems can be modeled using the proposed metamodel.