A Variable Context Model for Adaptable Service-Based Applications

Service-based applications SBAs rely on the invocation of services. The use of the service paradigm usually guarantees a high level of flexibility. In fact, applications can be easily reconfigured in order to continuously offer functionalities also in dynamic execution environments. This happens by changing the service selection and their composition. This flexibility can be exploited to design adaptable SBAs able to react to events that could happen during the application lifecycle. The execution flow of adaptable SBAs automatically changes on the basis of the context in which they are executing. The context includes information ranging from the situation in which users access the service-based applications to the status of the components involved in the execution of such applications. In this paper the authors propose a way to use context information to adapt SBAs. In particular, their goal is to discuss the way in which the context should be defined and managed in order to be exploited in the various activities related to the adaptation of service-based applications.