A Reflective Approach to Dynamic Software Evolution

In this paper, we present a solution that allows systems to remain active while they are evolving. Our approach goes out from the principle of separated concerns and has two steps. In the first step, we have to make sure that the system's evolvable concerns are cleanly separated. We propose aspect mining and static refactorings for separating those concerns. In a second step, we allow every concern to evolve separately. We present a preliminary reflective framework that allows dynamic evolution of separate concerns. 1 Problem Statement An intrinsic property of a successful software application is its need to evolve. In order to keep an existing application up to date, we continuously need to adapt it. Usually, evolving such an application requires it to be shut down, however, because updating it at runtime is generally not possible. In some cases, this is beyond the pale. The unavailability of critical systems, such as web services, telecommunication switches, banking systems, etc...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ECOOP
• Authors: Peter Ebraert, Tom Tourwé
• Keywords: ECOOP 2004, Programming Languages, Redundant Systems, Switching Mechanism, System's Evolvable Concerns