Context: Service-oriented computing and context-aware computing are two consolidated paradigms that are changing the way of providing and consuming software services. Whilst service-oriented computing is based on service-oriented architectures for providing flexible software services, context-aware computing articulates different phases of a context life cycle for changing the behavior of such services. The synergy between both paradigms provides the context to this study.

Objective: This study analyzes the current state of the art of context models, specifically: (1) which are these proposals and how are they related; (2) what are their structural characteristics; (3) what context information is the most addressed; and (4) what are their most consolidated definitions. Given their dominance on the field, the study focuses on ontology-based approaches.

Method: We conducted a systematic mapping by establishing a review protocol that integrates automatic and manual searches from different sources. We applied a rigorous method to elicit the keywords from the research questions and selection criteria to retrieve the papers to evaluate.

Results: Overall, 138 primary studies were selected to answer our research questions. These proposals were studied in depth by analyzing: 1) distribution along time and their relationships; 2) size correlated with the number of classes and levels of the context model, and coverage of the definitions provided as indicator of quality provided; 3) most addressed context information; 4) most consolidated definitions of context information.

Conclusions: The contribution of this survey is to make available a unified and consolidated body of knowledge on context for service-oriented computing that could be instantiated and used as starting point in a variety of use cases. This sweeping view on the anatomy of context models may help avoiding the postulation of new proposals not aligned with the current research.