Sentient computing

Context adaptation is a concept from software engineering that is used to refer to technical systems that can change their structure, functionality or behavior at run time to address different ambient conditions.

For technical systems such ambient conditions are referred to as context in general. Context in this context refers to the sufficiently accurate characterization of the situation of a system on the basis of information relevant for the adaptation of this system and perceived by the system information. Unlike context awareness context, the term adaptation describes not only a vague attribute, but also a concrete approach of systems engineering, such as the processing of context information can be designed and implemented in such systems. These include the definition and application of special methods for requirements analysis, design and testing of modeling and description techniques as well as reference architectures, frameworks and middleware.

The main objective of context adaptation is to achieve ubiquity ( = ubiquity ). Ubiquity in this sense means increasing the usability ( usability ) of a functionality in as many different situations. It is therefore important to consider when dealing with context adaptation three main criteria of ubiquity: the availability of the necessary hardware and software infrastructure, the applicability of the functionality in the situation under consideration, which means that the functionality can meet current user needs, and the operability of the application, which means that the necessary interactions are not in conflict with the user situation, ie, correspond to the currently free interaction skills.

Nowadays context adaptation is to be regarded as a key requirement for future mobile and ubiquitous systems which present themselves heterogeneous environment, where system and application functionality needs to be adjusted dynamically to ever-changing situations, especially because the needs and desires of the user at the center.