Carlos E. Cirilo

Model driven RichUbi: a model driven process for building rich interfaces of context-sensitive ubiquitous applications

The demand for software in Ubiquitous Computing, in which access to applications occurs anywhere, anytime and from different devices, has raised new challenges for Software Engineering. One of these challenges is related to the adaptation of the contents of an application to the numerous devices that can access it in distinct contexts. Another challenge is related to the building of rich interfaces with multimedia content, asynchronous communication and other features that characterize Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Searching for solutions focused on these challenges, a model-driven process for building rich interfaces of context-sensitive ubiquitous applications has been developed. The process, which is based on the conceptions of Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM), emphasizes the modeling reuse from a rich interface components metamodel. This metamodel provides a generic infrastructure for developing rich interfaces of applications, focusing on model-level reuse and on code generation for different Ubiquitous Computing platforms. In addition, the metamodel allows that the interface models are built by using the terms of rich interface domain, which facilitates the communication between users and developers.

Using archetypes and Domain Specific Languages on development of ubiquitous applications to pervasive healthcare

Pervasive healthcare focuses on the use of new technologies, tools, and services, in order to help patients to play a more active role in the treatment of their diseases. Since pervasive healthcare environments demand a huge amount of information exchange, the use of technologies like Health Level Seven (HL7) and archetypes has been proposed to provide interoperability between applications for these environments. However, the complexity of such technologies difficults their full adoption as well as the migration from centralized healthcare environments into pervasive ones. Aiming at collaborating to bridge this gap, this paper proposes an approach to integrate archetypes into HL7 v3 messages for the development of pervasive healthcare applications. The approach suggests the use of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs), which simplify the HL7 messages modeling and allow to automate most of the messages schema codification.

Content Adaptation in Ubiquitous Computing

According to the predominant computing environments, the history of Computing can be classified into the initial period of mainframes, the current one of personal computers, and the future one of Ubiquitous Computing whose goal is to provide the user with easy access to and processing of information at any time and from anywhere (Hansmann et al., 2003). Mobile communication has contributed to drive the leap of Computing into this new era, since it has given users unprecedented choice and freedom, enabling them to search for new and rewarding ways to conduct their personal and professional affairs. In just one decade, mobile networks have allowed for a growth rate that took fixed networks almost a century to achieve, and the advances in mobile technologies have led to the transition from voiceexclusive services to web-based content services. This globalized mobility requires new architectures and protocols that allow mobile networks to connect easily to several types of services and content providers spread over the Internet. The futuristic view of the mobile Internet presupposes users with different profiles using different access networks and mobile devices, requiring personalized services that meet their needs, availability and locations. In this context, it is necessary to describe information about people, places, devices and other objects that are considered relevant for the interaction between users and services, including the users and services themselves. The fields of Ubiquitous Computing include content adaptation, which involves converting an original content into a large number of formats compatible with the user preferences, the access device capabilities, the access network characteristics, and the delivery context. Due to the infinity of possible adaptations, the greater the quantity of available adaptation services, the higher the chances of meeting the user’s needs. The content adaptation can occurs at several points along the data path, including the origin server, the user device, and the edge device. An essential requirement for carrying out this process is the establishment of an adaptation policy, which defines what adaptation is to be done on a given content, when, and who should do it. To be effective, this policy must take into account information on users, devices, access network, content, and service agreement. The purpose of this Ubiquitous Computing book chapter is to do a survey on our main contributions in the field of content adaptation. The sequence of this chapter is organized as

Model Driven RichUbi - A Model-Driven Process to Construct Rich Interfaces for Context-Sensitive Ubiquitous Applications

Software development that meets the demand of Ubiquitous Computing, in which access to applications occurs anywhere, anytime and from different devices, has raised new challenges for Software Engineering. Among these challenges it stands out the development of context-sensitive ubiquitous applications. Much of the effort required for building such applications can be reduced through the reuse of the application’s modeling. Different parts of a ubiquitous application can be reused, such as the user interface. Generate the interfaces’ code so that they can self-adapt according to the different access contexts makes the application more dynamic and personalized. Therefore, by combining the conceptions of rich interfaces, domain-specific modeling, and context sensitivity, this paper presents a development process, called Model Driven RichUbi, to support the construction of rich interfaces for context-sensitive ubiquitous applications.

Hierarchical visual filtering, pragmatic and epistemic actions for database visualization

Visualization techniques of all sorts suffer from visual cluttering, the occlusion of visual information due to the overlap of graphical items; and from excessive complexity in analytical tasks due to multiple parallel perspectives. To cope with these problems, we introduce Hierarchical Visual Filtering, a novel interaction principle based on pragmatic and epistemic actions. Pragmatic actions here mean that the analyst is able to visually select and filter information, determining visual configurations that reveal different perspectives; epistemic actions mean that the analyst can record, annotate, and recall intermediate visualizations created pragmatically. To do so, we use a tree-like organization to keep multiple visualization workspaces linked according to the analytical decisions took by the user. Our goal is to promote an innovative systematization that can augment the potential for database visual inspection, and for visualization systems in general. It is our contention that Hierarchical Visual Filtering can inspire a novel scheme of visualization environments in which space limitations and complexity are treated by means of interactive tasks.

TOWARDS A HYBRID APPROACH FOR ADAPTING WEB GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES TO HETEROGENEOUS DEVICES USING CONTEXT

Ubiquitous Computing promises seamless access to a wide range of applications and Internet-based services from anywhere, at anytime, and using any device. In this scenario, new challenges for the practice of software development arise: Applications and services must keep a coherent behavior, a proper appearance, and must adapt to a plenty of contextual usage requirements and hardware aspects. Especially, due to its interactive nature, the interface content of Web applications must adapt to a large diversity of devices and contexts. In order to overcome such obstacles, this work introduces an innovative methodology for content adaptation of Web 2.0 interfaces. The basis of our work is to combine static adaption — the implementation of static Web interfaces; and dynamic adaptation — the alteration, during execution time, of static interfaces so as for adapting to different contexts of use. In hybrid fashion, our methodology benefits from the advantages of both adaptation strategies — static and dynamic. In this line, we designed and implemented UbiCon, a framework over which we tested our concepts through a case study and through a development experiment. Our results show that the hybrid methodology over UbiCon leads to broader and more accessible interfaces, and to faster and less costly software development. We believe that the UbiCon hybrid methodology can foster more efficient and accurate interface engineering in the industry and in the academy.

Building Adaptive Rich Interfaces for Interactive Ubiquitous Applications

The emerging of the Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005) has allowed users more interactivity with Web applications. Among the striking features of Web 2.0 applications, the use of rich interfaces that afford users a more meaningful experience with these applications stands out. In this context, the so-called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have transposed the boundaries of simple interfaces built only in HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Through the adoption of technologies that enable creating more advanced interfaces with interactive resources, such as asynchronous communication, drag-and-drop components, audio and video players, among others, RIAs resemble the appearance, behavior and usability of desktop applications (Deitel & Deitel, 2008).

A Service Layer for Building GSM Positioning Systems in E-Health Domain

Ubiquitous Computing has enabled seamless access to a wide variety of services and Internet-based applications anywhere, anytime, and using any device. These capacities along with the recent advances of wireless communication technologies allowed the development of the so-called location-based systems. However, building these systems can be a complex and expensive task, mainly due to the need to manage and maintain communication among the various entities that make up this type of system (e.g. devices, application servers, spatial databases, terminals, base-stations). In e-Health domain, where time and information accuracy can determine the success or failure of a medical emergency care, the demand for robust and accurate location-based systems has led to the need for new technologies that improve the processing and delivery of location data. Hence, this paper proposes a Service Layer which supports building Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Positioning Systems. The Service Layer enables interoperability among the different entities through the use of services. These services provide functionalities for position data processing and user interface adaptation for visualization in various mobile devices according to the interaction context. A case study illustrating the use of the Service Layer in an application for tracking ambulances has been conducted in order to investigate the feasibility of the proposal.