Overview
The Context Toolkit aims at facilitating the development and deployment
of context-aware applications.
By context, we mean environmental information that is part of
an application's operating environment and that can be sensed by the application.
The Context Toolkit consists of context widgets and a distributed infrastructure
that hosts the widgets. Context widgets are software components
that provide applications with access to context information while hiding
the details of context sensing.
In the same way GUI widgets insulate applications from some presentation
concerns, context widgets insulate applications from context acquisition
concerns.
To summarize, the services of the Context Toolkit are:
encapsulation of sensors
access to context data through a network API
abstraction of context data through interpreters
sharing of context data through a distributed infrastructure
storage of context data, including history
basic access control for privacy protection