1,903 research outputs found
A survey of self-management in dynamic software architecture specifications
As dynamic software architecture use becomes more widespread, a variety of formal specification languages have been developed to gain a better understanding of the foundations of this type of software evolutionary change. In this paper we survey 14 formal specification approaches based on graphs, process algebras, logic, and other formalisms. Our survey will evaluate the ability of each approach to specify self-managing systems as well as the ability to address issues regarding expressiveness and scalability. Based on the results of our survey we will provide recommendations on future directions for improving the specification of dynamic software architectures, specifically self-managed architectures
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
Towards a chemical model for software architecture reconfiguration
The chemical abstract machine is a general-purpose, simple, and intuitive programming model. Among other domains, it has been used for the specification and analysis of the computational behaviour of software architectures. In this paper we explore the ability of the formalism to express the dynamics of the architecture itself and to unify different approaches to reconfiguration within a single framework
A Systematic Approach to Constructing Families of Incremental Topology Control Algorithms Using Graph Transformation
In the communication systems domain, constructing and maintaining network
topologies via topology control (TC) algorithms is an important cross-cutting
research area. Network topologies are usually modeled using attributed graphs
whose nodes and edges represent the network nodes and their interconnecting
links. A key requirement of TC algorithms is to fulfill certain consistency and
optimization properties to ensure a high quality of service. Still, few
attempts have been made to constructively integrate these properties into the
development process of TC algorithms. Furthermore, even though many TC
algorithms share substantial parts (such as structural patterns or tie-breaking
strategies), few works constructively leverage these commonalities and
differences of TC algorithms systematically. In previous work, we addressed the
constructive integration of consistency properties into the development
process. We outlined a constructive, model-driven methodology for designing
individual TC algorithms. Valid and high-quality topologies are characterized
using declarative graph constraints; TC algorithms are specified using
programmed graph transformation. We applied a well-known static analysis
technique to refine a given TC algorithm in a way that the resulting algorithm
preserves the specified graph constraints.
In this paper, we extend our constructive methodology by generalizing it to
support the specification of families of TC algorithms. To show the feasibility
of our approach, we reneging six existing TC algorithms and develop e-kTC, a
novel energy-efficient variant of the TC algorithm kTC. Finally, we evaluate a
subset of the specified TC algorithms using a new tool integration of the graph
transformation tool eMoflon and the Simonstrator network simulation framework.Comment: Corresponds to the accepted manuscrip
A Systematic Approach to Constructing Incremental Topology Control Algorithms Using Graph Transformation
Communication networks form the backbone of our society. Topology control
algorithms optimize the topology of such communication networks. Due to the
importance of communication networks, a topology control algorithm should
guarantee certain required consistency properties (e.g., connectivity of the
topology), while achieving desired optimization properties (e.g., a bounded
number of neighbors). Real-world topologies are dynamic (e.g., because nodes
join, leave, or move within the network), which requires topology control
algorithms to operate in an incremental way, i.e., based on the recently
introduced modifications of a topology. Visual programming and specification
languages are a proven means for specifying the structure as well as
consistency and optimization properties of topologies. In this paper, we
present a novel methodology, based on a visual graph transformation and graph
constraint language, for developing incremental topology control algorithms
that are guaranteed to fulfill a set of specified consistency and optimization
constraints. More specifically, we model the possible modifications of a
topology control algorithm and the environment using graph transformation
rules, and we describe consistency and optimization properties using graph
constraints. On this basis, we apply and extend a well-known constructive
approach to derive refined graph transformation rules that preserve these graph
constraints. We apply our methodology to re-engineer an established topology
control algorithm, kTC, and evaluate it in a network simulation study to show
the practical applicability of our approachComment: This document corresponds to the accepted manuscript of the
referenced journal articl
A Conceptual Framework for Adapation
This paper presents a white-box conceptual framework for adaptation that promotes a neat separation of the adaptation logic from the application logic through a clear identification of control data and their role in the adaptation logic. The framework provides an original perspective from which we survey archetypal approaches to (self-)adaptation ranging from programming languages and paradigms, to computational models, to engineering solutions
- …