ReCooPLa: a DSL for Coordination-based Reconfiguration of Software Architectures

Abstract

In production environments where change is the rule rather than the exception, adaptation of software plays an important role. Such adaptations presuppose dynamic reconfiguration of the system architecture, however, it is in the static setting (design-phase) that such reconfigurations must be designed and analysed, to preclude erroneous evolutions. Modern software systems, which are built from the coordinated composition of loosely-coupled software components, are naturally adaptable; and coordination specification is, usually, the main reference point to inserting changes in these systems. In this paper, a domain-specific language—-referred to as ReCooPLa--is proposed to design reconfigurations that change the coordination structures, so that they are analysed before being applied in run time. Moreover, a reconfiguration engine is introduced, that takes conveniently translated ReCooPLa specifications and applies them to coordination structures.