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RESTful Platform Broker: A Novel Framework for Engineering Programmable Smart Spaces

Authors:
Govind Raj Pothengil
Subrat Kar
Hari Mohan Gupta

Keywords: Smart Space; Pervasive Computing; REST.

Abstract:
Designing and developing a Smart Space is a difficult engineering and research problem. This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel framework for engineering Programmable Smart Spaces called RESTful Platform Broker. The RESTful Platform Broker can be considered as a middleware on top of a platform (e.g., Android). It views the network of the Smart Space as a system bus and exposes resources (e.g., Mobile Phone cameras, Smart Phone sensors, etc. ) that are present in the platform as RESTful resources. Once the resources are exposed, these can be accessed by other devices present in the Smart Space. This facilitates programming the Smart Space and developing new services from the existing ones. Further, RESTful Platform Broker uses HTTP as a “glue” to interconnect heterogeneous components within the Smart Space. This enables any programming language, or any tool, which can understand HTTP to manipulate resources and program the Smart Space. This is an advantage as compared to earlier approaches, which warranted the use of specific languages to program a Smart Space or use protocols like 9P/9P2000, which are not as popular as HTTP. Further, the RESTful Platform Broker uses Hypermedia as an engine for application state, which allows various components within the Smart Space to evolve independently with respect to each other, thereby, increasing Smart Space extendability. Therefore, the RESTful Platform broker eases the engineering of a Smart Space by hiding the complexity of the physical infrastructure by providing a standard interface which can be used by Smart Space programmers to extend and program it.

Pages: 35 to 43

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2012

Publication date: May 27, 2012

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3727

ISBN: 978-1-61208-225-7

Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Dates: from May 27, 2012 to June 1, 2012