Building self-managing web information systems from generic components

The increasing need for device independence and personalization forces organizations to automatically adapt their Web Information Systems (WISs) to individual users and their client platforms. Moreover, the Web’s evolution to a dynamic interaction medium also requires such WISs to be self-adaptive, i.e. to dynamically adjust themselves to a constantly changing reality. Still, there are no generic software components to manage this multitude of adaptation aspects. This paper presents the Self-Adapting GAC (SAG), a generic component for realizing self-managing adaptive WISs. It has the capability to perform adaptive data transformations, but it can also dynamically reconfigure itself to the current situation. For configuring the SAG an RDF-based rule language is introduced, providing rules for both content adaptation and self-configuration. Moreover, based on the modular document generation architecture of the AMACONT project an implementation of the SAG is provided. The resulting architecture is explained in detail and elucidated by a running example prototype.