Static Context Model and Metrics for Assessing the Completeness and Understandability of Static Context Model

Though the number of context-aware applications is increasing day by day along with the users, there is no generic programming paradigm for context-aware applications. This situation could be remedied by designing and developing an appropriate context modeling and programming paradigm for context-aware applications. In this paper, we propose the static context model and metrics for validating the expressiveness and understandability of the model. Static context modeling is a way of describing a situation of entity under consideration using context entities, attributes and relationships. The model which is an extended and hybrid version of ER model, ontology model and graphical model is specifically meant for expressing and understanding the user situation in context-aware environment. The model is useful in understanding context-aware problems, preparing documentation and designing programs and databases. The model makes use of the Context Entity Attributes Relationship (CEAR) diagram for representing the association between the context entities and attributes. A new set of graphical notations for improving the expressiveness and understandability of the context is identified in the paper.