An asynchronous messaging platform for context-aware service development

The authors designed an asynchronous messaging platform to facilitate the development of context-aware services that are triggered by state judgment results (contexts) obtained by using multiple kinds of information from different generation sources in an environment where information providers, who actively disseminate information, and information holders, who provide information according to requests, persistently exist on a network. This platform also uses information that is obtained by using synchronous inquiries to calculate the activation triggers that are sought by the service providers in a distributed environment and provide these triggers to the application logic without destroying the asynchronous information generation order. In addition, the authors adapted this platform to a ubiquitous computing environment according to a design that takes into consideration large-scale distribution. They measured the basic performance of this platform and obtained measurement results showing that the platform can support a large-scale increase in the number of participating nodes and volume of circulating messages. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.