Olympus: A High-Level Programming Model for Pervasive Computing Environments

Abstract

Pervasive computing advocates the enhancement of physical spaces with computing and communication resources that help users perform various kinds of tasks. We call these enhanced physical spaces Active Spaces. Active Spaces are highly dynamic - the context and resources available in these environments can change rapidly. The large number of entities present in these spaces and the dynamism associated with them make it difficult for developers to program these environments. It is not always clear at development time which resources are to be used for performing various kinds of tasks and how to use them. In this paper, we introduce a new high-level programming model for pervasive computing environments, Olympus. The main feature of this model is that developers can specify Active Space entities and common Active Space operations at an abstract, high level. Active Space entities (which include services, applications, devices, physical objects, locations and users) can be specified using high level descriptions. Our framework resolves these descriptions into actual Active Space entities based on constraints specified by the developer, ontological descriptions of entities, the resources available in the current space, space-level policies and the current context of the space. The programming model also provides the developers with operators for commonly used functions. Examples of operators include start; stop and move components. Thus, developers do not have to worry about how various tasks are performed in the space in which their program is to be deployed. These details are taken care of by the model and the developer is free to focus on the actual logic of the program. In this paper, we discuss the programming model, its implementation and several example Active Space programs that have been developed using this model