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A middleware platform for the dynamic evolution of distributed component-based systems

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Abstract

In this paper, we present a middleware platform that supports the dynamic evolution of distributed component-based systems. It leverages the concept of ontologies to model the context of a system and an intrinsic mechanism is integrated to causally connect the dynamic architecture specification to the running system implementation. The ontological modeling covers both the environmental and the architectural knowledge using semantic data modeling. The intrinsic mechanism can automatically derive a run-time polymorphic architecture object to coordinate the involved components. The ontology based contextual representation and the polymorphic architecture-driven dynamic evolution are the two underpinnings of the platform. A scenario application—including the two primitive evolution actions—with the performance analysis is discussed to illustrate the feasibility.

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Notes

  1. https://juddi.apache.org/.

  2. http://axis.apache.org/.

  3. http://tomcat.apache.org/.

  4. Available at http://moon.nju.edu.cn/twiki/pub/ICSatNJU/YuZhou/saon.owl.

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Acknowledgments

The work was partially funded by the Chinese Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities under Grant No. NS2012135 and the NSF of China under Grant No. 61202002, No. 61272083, and No. 61379157.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Yu Zhou

  2. State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing , 210093, China

    Yu Zhou & Xiaoxing Ma

  3. Software Evolution and Architecture Lag, University of Zurich, 8050 , Zurich, Switzerland

    Harald Gall

Authors
  1. Yu Zhou
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  2. Xiaoxing Ma
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  3. Harald Gall
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Correspondence to Yu Zhou.

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Zhou, Y., Ma, X. & Gall, H. A middleware platform for the dynamic evolution of distributed component-based systems. Computing 96, 725–747 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-014-0396-7

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