Network technologies are gaining increasing interest and their applications are covering a wide spectrum of applications such as cloud, ubiquitous and sensor applications. However, developing such applications faces many challenges. Currently, middleware frameworks and services are used to relax some of the constraints and tackle the challenges to simplify network applications development, increase usability and enhance QoS among many others.
  In the International Symposium on Middleware and Network Applications (MNA 2010) held in Las Vegas, USA, several papers were presented addressing the different aspects of middleware services and network applications. For this issue we invited some of the best papers presented to submit an extended version of their work and we also invited some authors in the field to submit their work. After a careful review, we choose the list you find here.
  The first paper in this special issue, authored by Dabholkar and Gokhale, tackle the issue of middleware specialization to fit product-line requirements. Middleware solutions supporting reuse are generalized excessively to become suitable for a wide range of products and applications. However, this introduces high overhead and complexity in integrating and using the available functionalities. Therefore, the authors proposed a model to help specialize middleware features based on the product-line specific needs using reverse engineering. As a result the same general framework is adapted differently to different product-lines thus reducing footprint and overhead.
  On another front middleware support is highly needed to support sensor networks and their applications. This is demonstrated in the following two papers addressing sensor network software deployment and specific sensor functions such as target tracking. Horré et. al. tackle the issue of software deployment using application-level quality goals. At the application level, users and application developers require specific system behavior in terms of quality goals. While sensor network designers do not directly address high level requirements. Thus the authors provide a middleware service QARI that provides goal management and helps enable quality-aware software deployment for sensor network applications. The second paper by Makki et. al. addresses another important issue in sensor networks related to decision making and target tracking. Applications on wireless sensor networks have to face the challenges imposed by the nature of the networks including limited power, low processing abilities and limited communications capabilities. Target tracking is one of these applications and the authors propose an intelligent and independent decision making strategy for sensors to monitor targets in an active environment. The proposed method helps conserve energy by intelligently controlling sleep/awake times for services and providing fast wake up mechanisms for sensor nodes to enhance detection accuracy.
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