An Objectified Naming System for providing context transparency to context-aware applications

This paper describes the design and implementation of the Objectified Naming System (ONS) that provides a context-aware application with context transparent identification and rebinding of services, despite changes in its context or administrative domain. ONS treats a name as a first-class object, called a name object, which hides the name resolution and service rebinding procedures required when the context or administrative domain changes. ONS provides a context-based name structure, a context-aware name resolution mechanism, and an automated service rebinding mechanism. With ONS, applications can use name objects to refer to services in a context transparent way, regardless of context or administrative domain. The prototype implementation and experimental results indicate that ONS can streamline the development process of context-aware applications with reasonable runtime overhead.