Self-healing systems focus on how to reducing the complexity and cost of the management of dependability policies and mechanisms without human intervention. This position paper proposes a systematic approach to selfhealing systems via dependable architecture and reflective middleware. Firstly, the differences between self-healing systems and traditional dependable systems are illustrated via the construction of a dependable computing model. Secondly, reflective middleware is incorporated into the dependable computing model for investigating the feasibility and benefits of implementing self-healing systems by reflective middleware. Thirdly, dependable architectures are introduced for providing application specific knowledge related to self-healing. Fourthly, an architecture based deployment tool is implemented for deploying dependable architectures into heterogeneous and distribute environments. Finally, an architecture based reflective J2EE application server, called PKUAS, is impleme...