Handling the Dynamic Reconfiguration of Software Architectures Using Aspects

• Published in: 2009 13th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering pp. 263 - 266
• Main Authors: Costa-Soria, C., Perez, J., Carsi, J.A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.03.2009
• Subjects: AOSD; Architecture description languages; CBSD; Computer architecture; Connectors; dynamic reconfiguration; Information systems; Runtime; Software architecture; software architectures; Software development management; Software maintenance; Software systems; Topology
• ISBN: 1424437555; 0769535895; 9781424437559; 9780769535890
• ISSN: 1534-5351; 2640-7574
• DOI: 10.1109/CSMR.2009.33

Currently, most software systems have a dynamic nature and need to evolve at run-time. For this reason, the dynamic reconfiguration of software architectures is a challenge that must be dealt with to enable the creation and destruction of component instances and their links at run-time. This challenge is even greater when there are autonomous composite components which also need reconfiguration capabilities to evolve their internal compositions. This paper presents a novel approach to dynamically reconfigure software architectures taking advantage of aspect-oriented techniques. The approach presented is a platform-independent alternative whose aim is to increase the reuse and to decrease the maintenance effort. It deals with the challenge of reconfiguring composite components that: (1) are easy to maintain, since the dynamic reconfiguration concern is separated from the other concerns; (2) can autonomously reconfigure themselves, since each composite component is provided with dynamic reconfiguration services to change its internal architecture.