Context Management for Adaptive Information Systems

Modern technologies enable users accessing services using multiple channels. In the service design phase, this poses additional requirements for high software adaptivity along different technical requirements and different user expectations. During execution, services are usually dynamically selected; this service selection phase requires the identification of the most suitable service along the context that characterizes the users in the time instant in which they send the service request. This paper focuses on the selection phase and it aims at providing a framework to define and manage the context in a general environment characterized by adaptivity and multichannel access. An example to demonstrate the suitability and feasibility of the framework is provided referring to the MAIS (Multichannel Adaptive Information Systems) architecture and considering services related to the tourism domain. The MAIS architecture aims at providing automatically and efficiently services with the appropriate features by choosing among many provider offerings.