CONTRASTING ASPECTUAL DECOMPOSITIONS WITH OBJECT- ORIENTED DESIGNS IN CONTEXT-AWARE MOBILE APPLICATIONS

Abstract. Designing context-aware systems results in a complex task because of the high number of crosscutting concerns inherent to this kind of systems that must be considered and processed, as well as mobile devices constraints. It is essential to follow the most orthogonal approach to provide the necessary pluggability to cope with different contextual needs and adaptation mechanisms. Our solution consists of providing context-awareness to already existing not context-aware mobile solutions in a non-invasive way, using a combination of Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) and metadata techniques. We pursue minimal-coupling and minimal system-dependent solutions in order to build the generic framework for context-awareness we are working on. We present the design developed for a particular case study in a mobile scenario. By providing three versions of the same application, we compare an aspectual version with a pure object-oriented and a patterned one, evaluating some measures related to the code size, a critical factor in the deployment of mobile applications. 1