MICAAL: A Domain-Specific Language for Microservices in Ambient Assisted Living

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) has driven innovation across various sectors, one of its benefiting areas is healthcare. Within this domain, Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to improve the wellbeing and independence of vulnerable populations, particularly seniors, by using IoT technologies. As AAL environments become increasingly complex and diverse, traditional monolithic architectures struggle to offer the flexibility and scalability required for sustainable solutions. In response, paradigms such as microservices architectures emerge as a powerful approach to overcome these challenges. This paper presents MICAAL, a Domain-Specific Language (DSL), to model microservices-oriented architectures for AAL environments. MICAAL empowers users to design modular, scalable systems by enabling the easy selection and deployment of microservices ensuring that IoT devices in AAL environments are efficiently supported and adaptable to changing needs. We demonstrate the practical usability of MICAAL through a case study of a real-world AAL system. We also present an empirical evaluation, using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), assessing user satisfaction and intention to adopt MICAAL for modeling microservice-based architectures for AAL. The results confirm that MICAAL simplifies the modeling process and promotes efficient, future-proof AAL systems.