A Context Sharing Message Broker Architecture to Enhance Interoperability in Changeable Environments

Abstract

With the growing number of mobile devices connected to the network, demand for appropriate services according to the situational contexts of users is increasing. However, building such context-aware applications is costly because both the environments of users in the real world and available services on the network are dynamically changing. In this paper, we propose a Context Sharing Message Broker Architecture which supports applications in changeable environments which cooperate with each other. The message broker provides a common context model which applications can share. A context model works not only as a common interface to the real world context, but also as a common interface to the applications which share the context model. Applications only access the context model, and they do not directly communicate with each other. This approach has three advantages; this architecture reduces the complexity of distributed context-aware systems; the architecture keeps applications independent from each other; applications can maintain their common context model cooperatively. These advantages enable applications to cooperate, and yet keep applications independent from each other.