The evolving philosophers problem: dynamic change management

A model for dynamic change management which separates structural concerns from component application concerns is presented. This separation of concerns permits the formulation of general structural rules for change at the configuration level without the need to consider application state, and the specification of application component actions without prior knowledge of the actual structural changes which may be introduced. In addition, the changes can be applied in such a way so as to leave the modified system in a consistent state, and cause no disturbance to the unaffected part of the operational system. The model is applied to an example problem, `evolving philosophers´. The principles of this model have been implemented and tested in the Conic environment for distributed systems