ContextErlang: Introducing Context-oriented Programming in the Actor Model

摘要

Self-adapting systems are becoming widespread in emerging fields such as autonomic, mobile and ubiquitous computing. Context-oriented programming (COP) is a promising language-level solution for the implementation of context-aware, self-adaptive software. However, current COP approaches struggle to effectively manage the asynchronous nature of context provisioning. We argue that, to solve these issues, COP features should be designed to fit nicely in the concurrency model supported by the language. This work presents the design rationale of CONTEXTERLANG, which introduces COP in the Actor Model. We provide evidence that CONTEXTERLANG constitutes a viable solution to implement context-aware software in a highly concurrent and distributed setting. We discuss a case study and an evaluation of run-time performance.