Towards Cloud Mobile Hybrid Application Generation Using Semantically Enriched Domain Specific Languages

The advancements in computing have resulted in a boom of cheap, ubiquitous, connected mobile devices as well as seemingly unlimited, utility style, pay as you go computing resources, commonly referred to as Cloud computing. Taking advantage of this computing landscape, however, has been hampered by the many heterogeneities that exist in the mobile space as well as the Cloud space.

This research attempts to introduce a disciplined methodology to develop Cloud-mobile hybrid applications by using a Domain Specific Language (DSL) centric approach to

generate

applications. A Cloud-mobile hybrid is an application that is split between a Cloud based back-end and a mobile device based front-end. We present

mobicloud

, our prototype system we built based on a DSL that is capable of developing these hybrid applications. This not only reduces the learning curve but also shields the developers from the native complexities of the target platforms. We also present our vision on propelling this research forward by enriching the DSLs with semantics. The high-level vision is outline in the ambitious Cirrocumulus project, the driving principle being

write once - run on any device

.