Connector-Driven Gradual and Dynamic Software Assembly Evolution

Complex and long-lived software need to be upgraded at runtime. Replacing a software component with a newer version is the basic evolution operation that has to be supported. It is error-prone as it is difficult to guarantee the preservation of functionalities and quality. Few existing work on ADLs fully support a component replacement process from its description to its test and validation. The main idea of this work is to have software architecture evolution dynamically driven by connectors (the software glue between components). It proposes a connector model which autonomically handle the reconfiguration of connections in architectures in order to support the versioning of components in a gradual, transparent and testable manner. Hence, the system has the choice to commit the evolution after a successful test phase of the software or rollback to the previous state.