Runtime software adaptation: framework, approaches, and styles

ABSTRACT

Our ICSE 1998 paper showed how an application can be adapted at runtime by manipulating its architectural model. In particular, our paper demonstrated the beneficial role of (1) software connectors in aiding runtime change, (2) an explicit architectural model fielded with the system and used as the basis for runtime change, and (3) architectural style in providing both structural and behavioral constraints over runtime change. This paper examines runtime evolution in the decade hence. A broad framework for studying and describing evolution is introduced that serves to unify the wide range of work now found in the field of dynamic software adaptation. This paper also looks to the future, identifying what we believe to be highly promising directions.

REFERENCES

• 1: VMware. http://www.vmware.com/.
• 2: Xen. http://xen.org/.
• 3: The Globus Alliance. http://www.globus.org/.
• 4: Allen, R.J., Douence, R., and Garlan, D. Specifying and Analyzing Dynamic Software Architectures. In Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering. Lisbon, Portugal, March 1998, 1998.
• 5: David P. Anderson , Jeff Cobb , Eric Korpela , Matt Lebofsky , Dan Werthimer, SETI@home: an experiment in public-resource computing, Communications of the ACM, v.45 n.11, p.56-61, November 2002 [doi>10.1145/581571.581573]
• 6: Baset, S.A. and Schulzrinne, H. An Analysis of the Skype Peer-to-Peer Internet Telephony Protocol. Columbia University, Report CUCS-039-04, 2004.
• 7: Yuriy Brun , Nenad Medvidovic, An Architectural Style for Solving Computationally Intensive Problems on Large Networks, Proceedings of the 2007 International Workshop on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems, p.2, May 20-26, 2007 [doi>10.1109/SEAMS.2007.4]
• 8: Antonio Carzaniga , David S. Rosenblum , Alexander L. Wolf, Design and evaluation of a wide-area event notification service, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), v.19 n.3, p.332-383, Aug. 2001 [doi>10.1145/380749.380767]
• 9: Chan, A.T.S. and Chuang, S.-N. MobiPADS: A Reflective Middleware for Context-Aware Mobile Computing. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 29(12), p. 1072--1085, December, 2003.
• 10: Jeffrey Dean , Sanjay Ghemawat, MapReduce: simplified data processing on large clusters, Proceedings of the 6th conference on Symposium on Opearting Systems Design & Implementation, p.10-10, December 06-08, 2004, San Francisco, CA
• 11: Justin R. Erenkrantz , Michael Gorlick , Girish Suryanarayana , Richard N. Taylor, From representations to computations: the evolution of web architectures, Proceedings of the the 6th joint meeting of the European software engineering conference and the ACM SIGSOFT symposium on The foundations of software engineering, September 03-07, 2007, Dubrovnik, Croatia [doi>10.1145/1287624.1287660]
• 12: Patrick Th. Eugster , Pascal A. Felber , Rachid Guerraoui , Anne-Marie Kermarrec, The many faces of publish/subscribe, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.35 n.2, p.114-131, June 2003 [doi>10.1145/857076.857078]
• 13: Roy T. Fielding , Richard N. Taylor, Principled design of the modern Web architecture, ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), v.2 n.2, p.115-150, May 2002 [doi>10.1145/514183.514185]
• 14: Ian Foster , Carl Kesselman , Jeffrey M. Nick , Steven Tuecke, Grid Services for Distributed System Integration, Computer, v.35 n.6, p.37-46, June 2002 [doi>10.1109/MC.2002.1009167]
• 15: David Garlan , Dan Siewiorek , Asim Smailagic , Peter Steenkiste, Project Aura: Toward Distraction-Free Pervasive Computing, IEEE Pervasive Computing, v.1 n.2, p.22-31, April 2002 [doi>10.1109/MPRV.2002.1012334]
• 16: David Garlan , Shang-Wen Cheng , An-Cheng Huang , Bradley Schmerl , Peter Steenkiste, Rainbow: Architecture-Based Self-Adaptation with Reusable Infrastructure, Computer, v.37 n.10, p.46-54, October 2004 [doi>10.1109/MC.2004.175]
• 17: Michael M. Gorlick , Rami R. Razouk, Using weaves for software construction and analysis, Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Software engineering, p.23-34, May 13-17, 1991, Austin, Texas, United States
• 18: Paola Inverardi , Alexander L. Wolf, Formal Specification and Analysis of Software Architectures Using the Chemical Abstract Machine Model, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.21 n.4, p.373-386, April 1995 [doi>10.1109/32.385973]
• 19: Jeff Kramer , Jeff Magee, Self-Managed Systems: an Architectural Challenge, 2007 Future of Software Engineering, p.259-268, May 23-25, 2007 [doi>10.1109/FOSE.2007.19]
• 20: Larson, S.M., Snow, C.D., Shirts, M.R., and Pande, V.S. Folding@Home and Genome@Home: Using distributed computing to tackle previously intractable problems in computational biology. In Computational Genomics. Horizon Press, 2002.
• 21: David C. Luckham , James Vera, An Event-Based Architecture Definition Language, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.21 n.9, p.717-734, September 1995 [doi>10.1109/32.464548]
• 22: Jeff Magee , Jeff Kramer, Dynamic structure in software architectures, Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGSOFT symposium on Foundations of software engineering, p.3-14, October 16-18, 1996, San Francisco, California, United States
• 23: Daniel Le Métayer, Describing Software Architecture Styles Using Graph Grammars, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.24 n.7, p.521-533, July 1998 [doi>10.1109/32.708567]
• 24: MicrosoftTechNet. Introduction to Hotpatching. http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/8bf7c6e4-3175-43bd-a67a-827ff3a586011033.mspx?mfr=true, Microsoft Corporation, 2008.
• 25: Rob van Ommering , Frank van der Linden , Jeff Kramer , Jeff Magee, The Koala Component Model for Consumer Electronics Software, Computer, v.33 n.3, p.78-85, March 2000 [doi>10.1109/2.825699]
• 26: Oreizy, P. and Taylor, R.N. On the Role of Software Architectures in Runtime System Reconfiguration. IEE Proceedings - Software Engineering. 145(5), p. 137--145, October, 1998.
• 27: Peyman Oreizy , Michael M. Gorlick , Richard N. Taylor , Dennis Heimbigner , Gregory Johnson , Nenad Medvidovic , Alex Quilici , David S. Rosenblum , Alexander L. Wolf, An Architecture-Based Approach to Self-Adaptive Software, IEEE Intelligent Systems, v.14 n.3, p.54-62, May 1999 [doi>10.1109/5254.769885]
• 28: Pingdom. Best and worst US online banks revealed. http://www.pingdom.com/_img/press/best_and_worst_us_online_banks_revealed.pdf, 2006.
• 29: Steven P. Reiss, Connecting Tools Using Message Passing in the Field Environment, IEEE Software, v.7 n.4, p.57-66, July 1990 [doi>10.1109/52.56450]
• 30: Reuters. Routine Upgrade Blamed for BlackBerry Outage. New York Times. 12 February, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/technology/12cnd-rim.html?ex=1360558800&en=eceb00610baba273&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink.
• 31: Richard N. Taylor , Nenad Medvidovic , Kenneth M. Anderson , E. James Whitehead, Jr. , Jason E. Robbins , Kari A. Nies , Peyman Oreizy , Deborah L. Dubrow, A Component- and Message-Based Architectural Style for GUI Software, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.22 n.6, p.390-406, June 1996 [doi>10.1109/32.508313]
• 32: Taylor, R.N., Medvidovic, N., and Dashofy, E.M. Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice. John Wiley & Sons, 2008. In press.
• 33: Winfree, E. Simulations of computing by self-assembly of DNA. California Institute of Technology, Report CS-TR:1998:22, 1998.
• 34: Christine Ruth Hofmeister, Dynamic reconfiguration of distributed applications, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD, 1993

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.7 Distribution, Maintenance, and Enhancement

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
architectural styles, autonomic computing, software adaptation, software architecture, software evolution