A Java mobile-enabled environment to access adaptive services

Today information systems provide services which may be accessed through various types of devices and/or networks and from different locations. Services should be adapted at runtime to the features of the requiring device. Moreover, users may specify additional information when claiming for services, information through which they indicate the quality level required and expected from the provided services. For example, users may request the printing of an image by specifying also the expected resolution, format and/or number of colors. In this context, we propose a mobile-enabled approach to design and implement adaptable services. Our solution defines three different service layers: (1) a low-level network communication layer providing connectivity services among the peers available in a system, (2) a middleware managing the system-specific services and defining a communication protocol for the services requests, and (3) a high-level application layer dealing with domain-specific services. In this paper, attention is focused on the middleware and network communication layers. Copyright 2007 ACM.