Heavyweight extension to the UML class diagram metamodel for modeling context aware systems in ubiquitous computing

Abstract

Purpose The development of context-aware applications in ubiquitous environments depends not only on the user interactions but also on several context parameters. The handling of these parameters is a fundamental problem in these systems. The key purpose of this work is to enrich the unified modeling language (UML) class diagram with new constructs to provide a universal model capable of coping with the context-awareness concerns. Design/methodology/approach The authors provide a review of existing context handling approaches. Afterward, they relied on the UML extensibility mechanisms to propose a heavyweight extension for the UML class diagram. This generic approach allows describing the different context parameters since the modeling phase. Findings Existing solutions for context handling apply the contextual constraints on finished applications or tend to be dependent on a specific development process. This paper presents a solution based on UML, which allows dealing with context since the modeling phase, and independently of development processes. This proposal is implemented as an eclipse editor and illustrated through a case study in the healthcare field. Originality/value This paper addresses the problem of context handling, and it presents a review of the foremost existing solutions. The paper also presents a heavyweight extension for the UML class diagram, which consists in enriching it with additional constructs, capable of monitoring how applications are linked to context parameters and how the values of these parameters may affect the application behavior.

An Activity Theory-Based Approach for Context Analysis, Design and Evolution

“…Additionally, UML is used as a tool to design and model contexts. This has been reported in different implementation cases and exposed in a wide variety of related works [13,[44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52].…”

Bridging the model-to-code abstraction gap with fuzzy logic in model-based regression test selection

“…Dzidek et al [23] showed that using and updating UML designs during the maintenance and evolution of a software system increased the functional correctness and design quality of the evolved system. The systematic literature review of da Silva et al [64] showed that the UML profile-based mechanism is often used to customize a class diagram to properly support the design of context-awareness and self-adaptiveness properties of self-adaptive systems [1,7,10,36,39,56,62,65,66]. Vathsavayi et al [34] use genetic algorithms to dynamically insert and remove design solutions from the application class diagram in response to the changing environment, and propagate the design-level changes to the code level using the Javaleon platform [29].…”