INES – National Institute of Science and Technology for Software Engineering

Models, Processes and Tools for the Development of Context-Sensitive Systems

In a time when people use different devices and systems to accomplish their different and daily tasks, using the concept of context in computing systems is becoming a necessity. Context supports a system to identify what can or cannot be relevant to the user, since it aids increasing the understanding about the situation the user is in. Systems that use contextual information to guide their actions and behavior are called context-sensitive systems. Developing such a system, however, is not trivial. One must solve questions such as: what kind of information to be considered as context, how to represent them, how they can be acquired and processed and how to design the context usage.

In order to reduce the complexity embedded in this kind of application, this project intends to build an infrastructure to support designers of context-sensitive systems, that includes a reference architecture, metamodels, processes and tools. It will be investigated how the usage of model-driven development (MDD) can assist building these applications. It will be developed some prototypes of applications related to modeling processes in distributed software development and mechanisms of context-sensitive recommendation in organizational social networks.

This project is coordinated by DCC/UFBA and CIn-UFPE, and has the participation of UFPB and CESAR. People interested in collaborate can contact us through vaninha@ufba.br.