Abstract
A research topic of growing interest is the convergence between Collaborative Systems and Ubiquitous Computing, where context awareness is becoming a tool for enhancing collaboration processes. The application of Ubiquitous Computing concepts in the improvement of collaboration strategies created a research front called Ubiquitous Collaboration. This article proposes a framework to aid the development of collaborative applications for ubiquitous environments, called MaPS. MaPS works at one relevant stage of the collaboration. It uses context information and user profiles to improve the search for peers and the selection of communication channels. The article proposes the framework, its requirements and its architecture. Moreover, we describe a prototype and two applications which were developed with it. The framework was evaluated considering software development, based on the experience got in the implementation of the applications and aspects of functionalities. It was made through a scenario involving active participants. The results of both evaluations show the potential for using MaPS. Keywords: collaboration, collaborative applications, ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous collaboration, ubiquitous environments, context awareness.
Highlights
Nowadays, studies on mobility in distributed systems have been stimulated by the proliferation of portable electronic devices and the use of interconnection technologies based on wireless communication
The framework's architecture is defined, it can be adapted for different application architectures; (ii) Does the framework support the use of different user profiles and communication channels? One of the functional requirements of MaPS is extensibility
MaPS supports any media as communication channel, since it has information about its type and an identifier name; (iii) Is the framework customizable? This question aims at evaluating the necessary efforts to extend MaPS considering different cases of usage
Summary
Studies on mobility in distributed systems have been stimulated by the proliferation of portable electronic devices (for example, smartphones, tablet PCs and notebooks) and the use of interconnection technologies based on wireless communication (such as WiMAX, WiFi and bluetooth). MaPS is a proposal that uses context information and users' profile to improve the search for peers and the selection of communication channels. There are basic requirements that an environment must meet to support systems developed using the framework These requirements include functions that are not covered by MaPS, but are necessary for its operation, such as: (i) a service to manage users' profiles (Wagner et al, 2014); (ii) a service to provide context information (Bellavista et al, 2012); (iii) and a lexical database service (Miller, 1995) with semantically related terms, which will be used to establish semantic equivalence or similarity with the terms used in the search process. These classes implement the KnowledgeBase and the ContextProvider interfaces to access external services
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