Dynamic Sets: A Programming Abstraction for Object Bundling

Due to the dynamics of distributed ensembles in ubiquitous environments, developers can neither predetermine all environment settings at design time, nor rely on particular services or devices to be available at runtime. To better cope with such uncertainties, dynamic sets provide a programming abstraction that enables developers to program to the interface of a single device at design time, but to bundle and control a variable number of instances at runtime. Moreover, selection criteria for devices as well as the behavior of the set can be customized upon deployment or even be adapted at runtime.