Research And Implementation On Context Modeling And Supporting Tools

Context awareness is a new research field triggered by pervasive computing, that is, through sensors and related technology, computers can feel the current context, adjust their own behavior dynamically to provide users with the appropriate information and services. As an important basis for adaptive computing, context aware technology is widely used in pervasive computing, Internet computing and other areas. However, due to the environment for each system is complicated, resulting in it's difficult to describe, manage and use context information, so we should model abstract environments to simplify the complexity of context awareness. Appropriate context modeling method and good supporting tools are important for context modeling. In the current situation, there are many optional supporting tools and modeling methods for context modeling. With W3C organization promoting ontology description language (OWL), ontology-based context modeling method and Protégétool have become popular method and tool for modeling. Although there are many modeling tools, but most of them are for professionals and for all domains, not for specific domain, requiring the users to learn a lot of expertise before using. The usability is relatively poor.This paper makes an overview and comparison of several context modeling approaches and supporting tools, focus on emphasizing the ontology-based context modeling approach and Protégétool. It gives out a basic methodology to design context ontology and applies this layered methodology in the construction of context ontology.This paper also designs and implements a context ontology modeling tool supporting OWL based on this layered methodology which will ease the process of modeling context to some simple operations. In addition to managing the relationship between various context elements through tree structure, it also provides the user managing the relationship through painting hierarchical structure diagram. This facilitates the non-professionals and improves the usability of modeling tool. Features, underlying design and implementation, capacity for context modeling and compatibility with popular modeling tool of this tool are also discussed in this paper.