PerLa: a declarative language and a middleware Architecture for Pervasive Systems
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Start date: 2007-01-01
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Project abstract
The PerLa project aims at defining a declarative high level language that allows to query a pervasive system as a database like abstraction, hiding the difficulties related to handling different sensors technologies. The on-line addition of new devices requires a minimal amount of low level code by the user. Many real word applications are continuously monitored using a large number of heterogeneous sensing devices, both in terms of technology and functionality. The integration of data collected using different technologies (e.g.: Wireless Sensor Networks, RFID tag and GPS) is hard to achieve owing to the different interfaces provided to control and query each involved kind of device.
The research line aims at defining and building a tool for an easy management of wired and wireless sensors data. The tool is constituted by a declarative, SQL-like, high level language as a user interface, and by a complex middleware to integrate on-line, in a seamless way, many heterogeneous sensor types (from RFIDs to handheld computers) by masking their different nature to the application programmer. The goal of the middleware is to provide an abstraction for each device in terms of logical objects and to support the execution of PerLa queries.
We made the definition and the on-line addition of new devices easier by minimizing the amount of low level code the user has to write to make the new device recognizable by the system. Such feature is seldom found in similar systems, which usually admit only off-line device extensions. Application fields for PerLa are found wherever environmental measurement networks are to be established to monitor and react to physical changes; healthcare, geophysical and meteo risks, traffic and urban mobility, energy management are but a few examples of possible application areas. Currently a pilot project is working on the wall of Monte S. Martino in Lecco, in order to monitor possible rockfalls, and a prototype has been set up to follow the wine production process in a large winery company. Work is in progress to add context–awareness and context-management features into the system.
The research line aims at defining and building a tool for an easy management of wired and wireless sensors data. The tool is constituted by a declarative, SQL-like, high level language as a user interface, and by a complex middleware to integrate on-line, in a seamless way, many heterogeneous sensor types (from RFIDs to handheld computers) by masking their different nature to the application programmer. The goal of the middleware is to provide an abstraction for each device in terms of logical objects and to support the execution of PerLa queries.
We made the definition and the on-line addition of new devices easier by minimizing the amount of low level code the user has to write to make the new device recognizable by the system. Such feature is seldom found in similar systems, which usually admit only off-line device extensions. Application fields for PerLa are found wherever environmental measurement networks are to be established to monitor and react to physical changes; healthcare, geophysical and meteo risks, traffic and urban mobility, energy management are but a few examples of possible application areas. Currently a pilot project is working on the wall of Monte S. Martino in Lecco, in order to monitor possible rockfalls, and a prototype has been set up to follow the wine production process in a large winery company. Work is in progress to add context–awareness and context-management features into the system.
Project results
- Schreiber F. A., Tanca L., Camplani R., Viganò D. - Towards autonomic pervasive systems: the PerLa context language - Electronic Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Networking Meets Databases (Co-located with SIGMOD 2011), Athens, pp. 1-7, 2011.
- Schreiber F.A., Camplani R., Fortunato M., Marelli M., Rota G. - PerLa: A Language and Middleware Architecture for Data Management and Integration in Pervasive Information Systems - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (to appear), 02 Mar. 2011. IEEE-CS Digital Library, (DOI: 10.1007/s10844-010-0125-4), 2011
- Cappiello C., Schreiber F.A. - Quality- and Energy-Aware Data Compression by Aggregation in WSN Data Streams - Proc. of the Seventh Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2009), Galveston (Tx), pp. 634-639, 2009.
- Schreiber F.A., Camplani R., Fortunato M., Marelli M.- PERLA: A Declarative Language and Middleware for Pervasive Systems - Adjunct Proceedings – Posters and Demo Abstracts, 3rd EuroSSC, Zurich, pp. 19-20, 2008.
- Schreiber F.A., Camplani R., Fortunato M., Marelli M., Pacifici F. - PERLA: a Data Language for Pervasive Systems - Proc. of the Sixth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2008), Hong Kong, pp. 282-287, 2008.
