Abstract. Context-aware computing, an emerging paradigm in which
applications sense and adapt their behavior to changes in their operational
environment, is key to developing dependable agent-based software
systems for use in the often unpredictable settings of ad hoc networks.
However, designing an application agent which interacts with
other agents to gather, maintain, and adapt to context can be a difficult
undertaking in an open and continuously changing environment,
even for a seasoned programmer. Our goal is to simplify the programming
task by hiding the details of agent coordination from the programmer,
allowing one to quickly and reliably produce a context-aware application
agent for use in large-scale ad hoc networks. With this goal in mind,
we introduce a novel abstraction called context-sensitive data structures
(CSDS). The programmer interacts with the CSDS through a familiar
programming interface, without direct knowledge of the context gathering
and maintenance tasks that occur behind the scenes. In this paper,
we define a model of context-sensitive data structures, and we identify
key requirements and issues associated with building an infrastructure
to support the development of context-sensitive data structures.