Issues of Architectural Description Languages for Handling Dynamic Reconfiguration

Dynamic reconfiguration is the action of modifying a software system at runtime. Several works have been using architectural specification as the basis for dynamic reconfiguration. Indeed ADLs (architecture description languages) let architects describe the elements that could be reconfigured as well as the set of constraints to which the system must conform during reconfiguration. In this work, we investigate the ADL literature in order to illustrate how reconfiguration is supported in four well-known ADLs: pi-ADL, ACME, C2SADL and Dynamic Wright. From this review, we conclude that none of these ADLs: (i) addresses the issue of consistently reconfiguring both instances and types; (ii) takes into account the behaviour of architectural elements during reconfiguration; and (iii) provides support for assessing reconfiguration, e.g., verifying the transition against properties.Comment: 6\`eme Conf\'erence francophone sur les architectures logicielles (CAL'2012), Montpellier : France (2012

Functional BIP: Embedding connectors in functional programming languages

This paper presents a theoretical foundation for functional language implementations of Behaviour–Interaction–Priority (BIP). We introduce a set of connector combinators describing synchronisation, data transfer, priorities and dynamicity in a principled way. A static type system ensures the soundness of connector semantics. Based on this foundation, we implemented BIP as an embedded domain specific language (DSL) in Haskell and Scala. The DSL embedding allows programmers to benefit from the full expressive power of high-level languages. The clear separation of behaviour and coordination inherited from BIP leads to systems that are arguably simpler to maintain and reason about, compared to other approaches