Ensuring application integrity in shared sensing environments

Abstract

Smart Environments, such as smart offices, must support multiple applications that are deployed and managed by different parties. Smart Environments are always on and application software must therefore be deployed, configured and reconfigured while the system is running. Re-configurable component models provide the basic mechanisms necessary to achieve run-time reconfiguration. However, in cases with shared component instances, ensuring application integrity during 3rd party reconfiguration leads to high developer effort and disruption. This paper addresses this problem through Composition-Swapping, an extension of re-configurable component models wherein state management delegation and extended component meta-data are used to support component-sharing and ensure application integrity. We demonstrate that Composition-Swapping reduces reconfiguration effort and disruption for four concurrently running applications on a real-world smart office environment.