Requirements

 From the goal of this thesis (s. section ) a generic and abstract architecture with main elements as shown in figure can be derived. The term adaptable parts (grey areas in fig. ) is a general expression and stands for components, modules, objects, methods, byte code, etc. depending on the granularity of the adaptation mechanism and the software technology of the mobile code (e.g. component model, object oriented). These adaptable parts docked into the core together form the whole mobile code. The core consists of non-adaptable parts and provides the interface for the adaptable parts. It is used to bootstrap the adaptation mechanism for a particular piece of adaptation software. In the following adaptable methods are used to describe methods which build adaptable parts themselves or are contained in adaptable parts, e.g. classes.

From this architecture and the objective target to support application programmers to develop adaptable mobile code following classes of requirements can be derived:

1.

requirements concerning the overhead effort necessary for programming adaptable mobile code that fits into a generic adaptation framework

2.

requirements concerning the interaction between core and adaptation framework

3.

requirements concerning the costs of running adaptable mobile code (bandwidth, CPU usage, runtime, etc.)

These classes of requirements are explained in more detail in the following subsections. Each requirement is labeled with an acronym R<requirement number> for further reference in the survey. A summary of all requirements can be found in table .