An overview of interactive application composition approaches

Abstract

Application composition is an approach to create applications by using software components as building blocks. Applications can be composed ofWeb Services and resources associated with mobile devices, displays and various augmented everyday objects. In this article, we focus on ubiquitous applicationswhich aim at supporting users’ needs and everyday activities. Application composition is particularly suitable for these applications as it proposes to compose ubiquitous applications by choosing the appropriate set of services and resources and their configuration as required by users, their needs and other contexts. This article gives an overview and classifies interactive application composition approaches. These approaches provide the necessary user tools and various user interfaces to enable users themselves to specify their needs and achieve their goals with composed applications. The approaches in this article are analyzed according to the user support provided during the application life-cycle and user involvement during the application composition and execution phases. Furthermore,we look inside the design of user interfaces for visual and non-visual user tools and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. In addition to giving an overview of this research field, our aim is to provide means for describing, classifying and comparing different composition approaches.

Keywords

• ubiquitous computing
• interaction design
• application composition