A Middleware Architecture for Context-Aware and Location-Based Mobile Applications

The development of location and context-aware applications is greatly facilitated by the use of context-provisioning middleware. However, development of such applications still remains a challenge from the point of view of software engineering. In this paper we present MoCA, a service-oriented middleware architecture that supports the development and deployment of distributed context-aware applications for mobile users. Besides explaining its main services and APIs, we discuss in which ways the MoCA architecture supports some well-known software engineering principles that apply to the design and implementation of context-aware applications. Furthermore, we give an overview of its usage and present the most notable prototype applications that have been developed on the top of MoCA.