DynamicSchema: A Lightweight Persistency Framework for Context-Oriented Data Management

Castro Mejia, Sergio [UCL] Gonzalez Montesinos, Sebastian Andres [UCL] Mens, Kim [UCL] Denker, Marcus [INRIA Lille]

While context-oriented programming technology so far has focused mostly on behavioral adaptation, context-oriented data management has received much less attention. In this paper we make a case for the problem of context-oriented data management, using a concrete example of a mobile application. We illustrate some of the issues involved and propose a lightweight persistency framework, called DynamicSchema, that resolves some of these issues. The solution consists in a flexible reification of the database schema, as a convenient dynamic data structure that can be adapted at execution time, according to sensed context changes. Implementing our mobile application using this framework enabled us to reduce the complexity of the domain modeling layer, to facilitate the production of code with low memory footprint, and to simplify the implementation of certain scenarios related to context-dependent security concerns.