The Smart-M3 Semantic Information Broker (SIB) plug-in extension: Implementation and evaluation experiences

Smart spaces are gaining relevance as promising deployment environments for novel classes of applications stemming from the dynamic discovery and interaction between smart objects and the resources available in their physical localities, e.g., seamlessly exploiting smartphones to control embedded home equipment. The Semantic Information Broker (SIB) of the Smart-M3 platform can well support interoperability of statically unknown devices and service/application components in a smart space based on lightweight semantically-tagged data sharing. The paper focuses on the experience made and the lessons learned from the work of design, implementation, deployment, and experimental validation/evaluation of the SIB “Plug-in” extension. This extension allows SIB administrators to personalize and extend SIB installations simply and with a well-defined methodology, by cleanly adding plug-in extensions that can support domain- and deployment-specific facilities, thus opening new market opportunities for Smart-M3 exploitation. The reported results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach: in particular, we report the experience made with a notable example of plug-in component that can measure the runtime-offered SIB quality of service, expressed as a set of concise performance indicators.