Towards a unified formal model for supporting mechanisms of dynamic component update

ABSTRACT

The continuous requirements of evolving a delivered software system and the rising cost of shutting down a running software system are forcing researchers and practitioners to find ways of updating software as it runs. Dynamic update is a kind of software evolution that updates a running program without interruption. This paper covers the fundamental issues of the mechanisms of dynamic update theoretically. Based on a similarity analysis of many typical approaches to dynamic update during the past decades, we propose a unified formal model (namely, Dynamic Update Connector) to specify mechanisms of updating an architectural component, and reason about its properties. The model borrows the concept of connectors from software architecture community and is specified using process algebra CSP. We also demonstrate the applications of our DUC model.

REFERENCES

• 1: Jyrki Akkanen , Attila Kiss , Jukka K. Nurminen, Evolution of a Software Component - Experiences with a Network Editor Component, Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, p.119-125, March 11-13, 2002
• 2: Robert John Allen , David Garlan, A formal approach to software architecture, 1997
• 3: M. Dmitriev. Towards flexible and safe technology for runtime evolution of java language applications. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Engineering Complex Object-Oriented Systems for Evolution, pages 14--18, October 2001.
• 4: Dominic Duggan, Type-based hot swapping of running modules (extended abstract), ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.36 n.10, October 2001
• 5: I. Foster, J. Frey, S. Graham, et al. Modeling Stateful Resources with Web Services, Version 1.1, 2004.
• 6: N. Feng, G. Ao, T. White, and B. Pagurek. Dynamic evolution of network management software by software hot-swapping. In Proceedings of IEEE/IFIP International Symposium on Integrated Network Management(IM), pages 63--76, May 2001.
• 7: Formal Systems. FDR2 Homepage. http://www.fsel.com/software.html.
• 8: Ross Gardler , Nikolay Mehandjiev, Supporting Component-Based Software Evolution, Revised Papers from the International Conference NetObjectDays on Objects, Components, Architectures, Services, and Applications for a Networked World, p.103-120, October 07-10, 2002
• 9: M. L. Griss and R. R. Kessler. Achieving the promise of reuse with agent components. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2603:139--147, 2003.
• 10: Deepak Gupta , Pankaj Jalote , Gautam Barua, A Formal Framework for On-line Software Version Change, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.22 n.2, p.120-131, February 1996 [doi>10.1109/32.485222]
• 11: Gang Huang , Hong Mei , Qian-xiang Wang, Towards software architecture at runtime, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, v.28 n.2, March 2003 [doi>10.1145/638750.638780]
• 12: Gang Huang , Hong Mei , Fu-Qing Yang, Runtime recovery and manipulation of software architecture of component-based systems, Automated Software Engineering, v.13 n.2, p.257-281, April 2006 [doi>10.1007/s10515-006-7738-4]
• 13: Steffen Hauptmann , Josef Wasel, On-line Maintenance with On-the-fly Software Replacement, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Configurable Distributed Systems, p.70, May 06-08, 1996
• 14: Michael William Hicks , Scott M. Nettles, Dynamic software updating, 2001
• 15: C. A. R. Hoare, Communicating sequential processes, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1985
• 16: Nico Janssens , Sam Michiels , Tom Holvoet , Pierre Verbaeten, A Modular Approach Enforcing Safe Reconfiguration of Producer-Consumer Applications, Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, p.274-283, September 11-14, 2004
• 17: N. Janssens, S. Michiels, T. Mahieu, and P. Verbaeten. Towards transparent hot-swapping support for producer-consumer components. In Proceedings of Second International Workshop on Unanticipated Software Evolution (USE), 2003.
• 18: Jeff Kramer , Jeff Magee, The Evolving Philosophers Problem: Dynamic Change Management, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.16 n.11, p.1293-1306, November 1990 [doi>10.1109/32.60317]
• 19: Robert Laddaga , James Veitch, Dynamic object technology, Communications of the ACM, v.40 n.5, p.36-38, May 1997 [doi>10.1145/253769.253782]
• 20: Insup Lee, Dymos: a dynamic modification system, 1983
• 21: M. M. Lehman and J. F. Ramil. Software evolution in the age of component based software engineering. IEE Proc. Softw., sp. issue on Component Based Software Eng., 147(6):249--255, June 2000.
• 22: Janghoon Lyu , Youngjin Kim , Yongsub Kim , Inhwan Lee, A Procedure-Based Dynamic Software Update, Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (formerly: FTCS), p.271-284, July 01-04, 2001
• 23: Scott Malabarba , Raju Pandey , Jeff Gragg , Earl Barr , J. Fritz Barnes, Runtime Support for Type-Safe Dynamic Java Classes, Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, p.337-361, June 12-16, 2000
• 24: N. Medvidovic, E. M. Dashofy, and R. N. Taylor. The role of middleware in architecture-based software development. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 13(4):367--393, April 2003.
• 25: Nikunj R. Mehta , Nenad Medvidovic , Sandeep Phadke, Towards a taxonomy of software connectors, Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Software engineering, p.178-187, June 04-11, 2000, Limerick, Ireland [doi>10.1145/337180.337201]
• 26: PKUAS: An Architecture-Based Reflective Component Operating Platform, Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems (FTDCS'04), p.163-169, May 26-28, 2004
• 27: Mary Shaw , David Garlan, Software architecture: perspectives on an emerging discipline, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1996
• 28: Alessandro Orso , Donglin Liang , Mary Jean Harrold , Richard Lipton, Gamma system: continuous evolution of software after deployment, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis, July 22-24, 2002, Roma, Italy
• 29: A Technique for Dynamic Updating of Java Software, Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM'02), p.649, October 03-06, 2002
• 30: Object Management Group, The Common Object Request Broker: Architecture and Specification, Version 3.0, formal/02-06-01, 2002.
• 31: F. Plásil , D. Bálek , R. Janecek, SOFA/DCUP: Architecture for Component Trading and Dynamic Updating, Proceedings of the International Conference on Configurable Distributed Systems, p.43, March 04-06, 1998
• 32: Marija Rakic , Nenad Medvidovic, Increasing the confidence in off-the-shelf components: a software connector-based approach, Proceedings of the 2001 symposium on Software reusability: putting software reuse in context, p.11-18, May 2001, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• 33: Steve Schneider , S. A. Schneider, Concurrent and Real Time Systems: The CSP Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1999
• 34: Mark E. Segal , Ophir Frieder, On-the-Fly Program Modification: Systems for Dynamic Updating, IEEE Software, v.10 n.2, p.53-65, March 1993 [doi>10.1109/52.199735]
• 35: Bridget Spitznagel , David Garlan, A compositional formalization of connector wrappers, Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, May 03-10, 2003, Portland, Oregon
• 36: Nigamanth Sridhar , Scott M. Pike , Bruce W. Weide, Dynamic Module Replacement in Distributed Protocols, Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, p.620, May 19-22, 2003
• 37: Sun Microsystems. Enterprise Java Bean (EJB). http://java.sun.com/products/ejb.
• 38: Sun Microsystems. Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition Specification. http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/index.jsp.
• 39: Sun Microsystems. Java Document for Reflection. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/reflection/.
• 40: Run-time Evolution for Embedded Component-Oriented Systems, Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM'02), p.242, October 03-06, 2002
• 41: An Application Server to Support Online Evolution, Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM'02), p.131, October 03-06, 2002
• 42: Yankee Group. How much is an hour of downtime worth to you? Must-Know Business Continuity Strategies, pages 178--187, July 2002.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Domain-specific architectures

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Patterns (e.g., client/server, pipeline, blackboard)
      D.2.4 Software/Program Verification
          Subjects: Formal methods

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Theory, Verification

Keywords:
CSP, architectural connector, dynamic update, software architecture