Serenoa Languages

The languages developed in Serenoa will cover the specification of adaptive SFEs at different abstraction layers, and of the context-dependent transformation rules to be applied on the user interfaces. With the Serenoa solution, the exploitation of both these languages will be supported not only at design time but also at runtime. At design time, the authoring tools will help the designers, engineers and web authors to easily create and edit context- sensitive SFEs for different platforms (at both abstract and concrete levels) and relevant context-dependent transformations rules. At runtime, the logical descriptions of the SFEs and of the adaptation rules will be transformed in a final, adapted user interface implementation.

• The Advanced Service Front-End Description Language (ASFE-DL) is aimed at enabling the development and authoring of context-aware SFEs. The user interfaces modelled through this language will be adapted to the context by exploiting the rules defined through the Advanced Adaptation Logic Description Language (AAL-DL). By leveraging on past expertise on user interface languages that Serenoa members have already authored or co-authored, and on previous experiences they gathered by working in relevant industrial case studies to support requirements of most modern service-based user interfaces, the Serenoa consortium plan to build a more complete language that will allow ASFE-DL to meet the Serenoa requirements and to go beyond the state-of-the-art in this field. The ASFE-DL has been already specified at the Abstract user interface level: it describes the UI through a number of abstract interaction units and associated connections in a modality-independent manner. In the next months the Serenoa project plans to cover also the Concrete user interface level. The ASFE-DL is currently being submitted as an input to standardisation work at W3C.

• The Advanced Adaptation Logic Description Language (AAL-DL) is a high-level language intended to express advanced adaptation logic in a declarative manner. The basic idea is that the user interfaces modelled through ASFE-DL will be adapted to the context by exploiting the rules defined through the AAL-DL. The AAL-DL rules have been expressed through an Event-Condition-Action (ECA)-based format where: i) events are changes that can occur in the context state or in the UI state; ii) conditions are Boolean predicates referring to context state or UI state; iii) actions are changes affecting the interactive application. In the current specification of the AAL-DL we have considered the definition of first-order adaptation rules (simple adaptation rules like e.g., adapt this service front-end for this platform) and second-order adaptation rules (those that govern the application of adaptation rules by e.g. selecting first-order rules: the action part of a rule can be in turn another rule). In the next version of this language we will consider third-order adaptation rules (strategies that privilege some adaptation approach for usability, performance, reliability or rules that promote or demote sets of second-order rules).