A ubiquitous IAs access platform (UIAP) over UPnP

Abstract

The radical development in information technology makes the information appliances (IAs) able to interact and share information using the universal plug and play (UPnP) protocol. Inter‐IA interactions that involve more than one IA do exist in the future digital home network. Nowadays, inter‐IA interactions are developed by system and service providers and are fixed. It is difficult for users to customize their inter‐IA interactions. In this paper, we propose the service interaction script (SIS) language, which is a flow control language for users to customize their own inter‐IA interactions through the Web interfaces in the UPnP home network. Domain‐specific statements for the development of the inter‐IA interactions in SIS are (i) IA access statement, (ii) parallel statement and (iii) interaction event handling statement. On the other hand, the ubiquitous IAs access platform (UIAP) that allows users to use handheld devices to access the IA base on the UPnP protocol is also developed. UIAP provides the Web interfaces, i.e. (i) control panel and (ii) interaction customization panel, for users to access IAs remotely using handheld devices with or without the UPnP capability. The interaction customization panel contains (i) an easy mode and (ii) an advanced mode for users to customize inter‐IA interactions defined by themselves through the Web interfaces using SIS. In the easy mode, inter‐IA interaction customizations are achieved through the Web graphical user interface components and translated into SIS programs; in the advanced mode, users can write SIS programs directly. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.