Improvised assembly mechanism for component-based mobile applications

We propose a mechanism to facilitate the development of component-based mobile applications with adaptive behaviors. The design principles and communication patterns of legacy software systems will greatly change in a forthcoming environment, where a variety of computing devices become embedded in home and office environments, users move around with/without portable computing devices, and all the devices are interconnected through wired/wireless networks. In the proposed mechanism, Improvised Assembly Mechanism (IAM), we realize functionality to compose an application in an ad hoc manner and to achieve the adaptation of applications by adding, replacing, supplementing, and relocating components at system runtime according to various environmental changes such as the locational changes of computing devices and users. The mechanism is implemented as a built-in functionality of the Soul component, which is one of the fundamental elements in the Possession model.