Ontology and application to improve dynamic bindings in mobile distributed systems

In mobile, component-based, distributed systems, computing environments utilize software components on an ad hoc, as-needed basis. In such systems, software components must register and announce not only their presence but also their functionality while client components must express their needs for these other components. The binding machinery should intelligently match clients to candidates. Finally, human users of high-level services -- whose underlying components are invisibly involved in such maneuverings -- need a way to have their preferences recorded and leveraged. The current art, such as implementations of OSGi, addresses these issues in a way that is unsatisfactory. In particular, when a wider number of component-based mobile systems will need to inter-work, and when mobile devices are "labeled" with dynamic geo-spatial attributes that should be leveraged during binding, the current art is insufficient. This paper describes an ontology and an application that together enable much richer component registrations, queries, and bindings. It also describes a novel visual application that makes the specification of geo-spatial binding preferences more accessible to end-users. Two implemented and related Lab scenarios are also presented.