An ad-hoc social network generation approach

TL;DR

This paper presents SMGenerator, a generative programming environment that creates ad-hoc social network applications for Android, demonstrated through the ConfInfo app for information dissemination at events.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using generative programming to rapidly develop ad-hoc social network applications from specifications.

Findings

Successfully developed SMGenerator for Android

Generated the ConfInfo application for event information sharing

Demonstrated rapid deployment of ad-hoc social networks

Abstract

The use of social networks is still confined to infrastructure-based networks such as the Internet. However, many situations (conferences, fairs, etc.) may require the implementation and rapid deployment of an ad-hoc application for disseminating information: we call this type of application, Ad-hoc Social Network. These applications are necessarily distributed, deployable on mobile units, etc. They therefore inevitably share the same characteristics as those inherent in ad-hoc mobile networks and make them good candidates for their deployment. In this paper, by using techniques from the field of generative programming, we propose an approach to produce environments for generating such applications from their specifications in a domain-specific language. By applying this approach, we have developed SMGenerator, an environment for generating mobile ad-hoc social network applications for Android devices. Moreover by using SMGenerator, we easily generated the ConfInfo application: an ad-hoc social network application for disseminating information to participants in a scientific manifestation.