Specification of Software Architecture Reconfiguration

In the past years, Software Architecture has attracted increased attention by academia and industry as the unifying concept to structure the design of complex systems. One particular research area deals with the possibility of reconfiguring architectures to adapt the systems they describe to new requirements. Reconfiguration amounts to adding and removing components and connections, and may have to occur without stopping the execution of the system being reconfigured. This work contributes to the formal description of such a process. Taking as a premise that a single formalism hardly ever satisfies all requirements in every situation, we present three approaches, each one with its own assumptions about the systems it can be applied to and with different advantages and disadvantages. Each approach is based on work of other researchers and has the aesthetic concern of changing as little as possible the original formalism, keeping its spirit. The first approach shows how a given reconfiguration can be specified in the same manner as the system it is applied to and in a way to be efficiently executed. The second approach explores the Chemical Abstract Machine, a formalism for rewriting multisets of terms, to describe architectures, computations, and reconfigurations in a uniform way. The last approach uses a UNITY-like parallel programming design language to describe computations, represents architectures by diagrams in the sense of Category Theory, and specifies reconfigurations by graph transformation rules

Formal Foundations for the Specification of Software Architecture

This investigation establishes a formal foundation for software architecture that allows for the specification of large, non-trivial software systems using well founded, consistency preserving construction techniques. Two fundamental problems were addressed: how to define and express architectures formally using the concept of theories, and how architecture theories can be practically applied in specification construction. The initial stages of this investigation sought to establish a formal, mathematical relationship between functional specifications of behavior and specifications defining system structure. Experimental results lead to the conclusion that architectures defining the structure of functional operations can be defined using functional logic, but more complex architectures require a separate process logic. A process logic based on Hoare\u27s Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) was selected for representing and reasoning about system structure and was used in the definition of a process-based specification development system. Specifically, CSP was used to define a category of process-based specifications and specification morphisms. This allowed well-founded specification construction techniques such as specification morphisms, colimits, and interpretations to be applied to the construction of consistent software architecture. Architecture theories expressed in terms of functional and process-based specifications were defined, and translations between these architecture theories were investigated. A feasibility analysis on an image processing application demonstrated that architecture theories can be used to develop specifications for large, non-trivial applications. (KAR) P. 2

Architectural Implementation of NASA Space Telecommunications Radio System Specification

This software demonstrates a working implementation of the NASA STRS (Space Telecommunications Radio System) architecture specification. This is a developing specification of software architecture and required interfaces to provide commonality among future NASA and commercial software-defined radios for space, and allow for easier mixing of software and hardware from different vendors. It provides required functions, and supports interaction with STRS-compliant simple test plug-ins ("waveforms"). All of it is programmed in "plain C," except where necessary to interact with C++ plug-ins. It offers a small footprint, suitable for use in JPL radio hardware. Future NASA work is expected to develop into fully capable software-defined radios for use on the space station, other space vehicles, and interplanetary probes

A Learning Perspective on Groupware Implementation

We propose to look at the implementation of groupware from a learning perspective. In this paper we motivate this view and outline our research model. Research questions of the project are: What are the influential characteristics of learning for the implementation of groupware? And: how can this implementation process be improved

On Modelling and Analysis of Dynamic Reconfiguration of Dependable Real-Time Systems

This paper motivates the need for a formalism for the modelling and analysis of dynamic reconfiguration of dependable real-time systems. We present requirements that the formalism must meet, and use these to evaluate well established formalisms and two process algebras that we have been developing, namely, Webpi and CCSdp. A simple case study is developed to illustrate the modelling power of these two formalisms. The paper shows how Webpi and CCSdp represent a significant step forward in modelling adaptive and dependable real-time systems.Comment: Presented and published at DEPEND 201

Transparent Dynamic reconfiguration for CORBA

Distributed systems with high availability requirements have to support some form of dynamic reconfiguration. This means that they must provide the ability to be maintained or upgraded without being taken off-line. Building a distributed system that allows dynamic reconfiguration is very intrusive to the overall design of the system, and generally requires special skills from both the client and server side application developers. There is an opportunity to provide support for dynamic reconfiguration at the object middleware level of distributed systems, and create a dynamic reconfiguration transparency to application developers. We propose a Dynamic Reconfiguration Service for CORBA that allows the reconfiguration of a running system with maximum transparency for both client and server side developers. We describe the architecture, a prototype implementation, and some preliminary test result

Analysis of Machine Learning Approach for the modemodel in SWC Mapping in Automotive Systems

Automotive technologies are ever-increasinglybecoming digital. Highly autonomous driving togetherwith digital E/E control mechanisms include thousandsof software applications which are called as software components. Together with the industry requirements, and rigorous software development processes, mappingof components as a software pool becomes very difficult.This article analyses and discusses the integration possiblilities of machine learning approaches to our previously introduced concept of mapping of software components through a common software pool

An Enhanced Performance Analysis of Software Using Architectural Feedback

The importance of software products and their quality attributes attainment has been a thing of concern in recent time to both academia and industry experts. This research work evaluated an enhanced performance analysis of software using architectural feedback. Data collected were, classified and analysed using SPSS reveal that the Relative Importance Index (RII) in relations to an enhance performance analysis of software using the architectural feedback was 0.83 which led to the proposal of a framework for an enhanced performance analysis of software using architectural feedback