Towards a UML profile for context-awareness domain

Defining Unified Modelling Language (UML) profiles allows adaptation of the UML metamodel for specific domain, area, platform, etc. Context awareness is one of particular domains that need to be well adapted when we use UML language to model specific situations of users and applications. Therefore, it is necessary to create specific modelling notations for this particular domain. In this paper, we present an extension of the UML notations as a profile used for contextaware applications development in ubiquitous computing environment. The proposed UML context-aware profile is a package of specific profiles that extend the standard notations of three UML diagrams chosen according to different views of a system (use case diagram, sequence diagram and activity diagram). For each diagram, we propose UML extension mechanisms such as stereotypes, constraints and tagged values that can model any contextual situation by an adequate graphic representation. Each element of the context of use should be able to be represented by this UML profile. To demonstrate the feasibility of our work, an example in medical field is shown by using StarUML software modelling platform. This work will complete the list of extended notations (class diagram) presented in previous work in order to propose a more complete UML profile.