WildCAT: a generic framework for context-aware applications

Abstract

We present WildCAT, an extensible Java framework to ease the creation of context-aware applications. WildCAT provides a simple yet powerful dynamic model to represent an application's execution context. The context information can be accessed by application programmers through two complimentary interfaces: synchronous requests (pull mode) and asynchronous notifications (push mode). Internally, WildCAT is designed as a framework supporting different levels of extensions, from the simple configuration of the default generic implementation to completely new implementations tailored to specific needs. A given application can mix different implementations for different aspects of its context while only depending on WildCAT's simple and unified API.