Pervasive computing environments present new challenges that hinder traditional approaches to software engineering. In this paper, we tackle one such challenge: the need of pervasive application developers to have access to constructs that enable resource discovery in dynamic environments. We first define the evolving tuples model, a novel extension to traditional tuple spaces that allows applications to embed context-aware adaptation directly in structures traditionally used for distributed coordination. The behavior applications embed in evolving tuples can subsequently be used by discovery queries to allow environmental characteristics to directly impact the results of discovery. Our approach minimizes the amount of infrastructure that must be available to support discovery by embedding the discovery functionality almost exclusively within the tuple and makes the resource discovery process transparent. At the same time, our model retains many of the benefits of traditional tuple space approaches, namely providing content-based coordination that is easy for developers to understand and implement. The evolving tuple's inherent flexibility also allows resource discovery to adapt to the changing resources, applications, and environments.
The evolving tuples model, presented in REF , is an extension to traditional Linda tuple spaces with the goal of supporting resource discovery in a pervasive system, relying on ideas inspired to TOTA.
Resource discovery with evolving tuples
ESSPE '07
Computer Science