A Formal Framework for Structural Reconfiguration of Components under Behavioural Adaptation

A major asset of modern systems is to dynamically reconfigure systems to cope with failures or component updates. Nevertheless, designing such systems with off-the-shelf components is hardly feasible: components are black-boxes that can only interact with others on compatible interfaces. Part of the problem is solved through Software Adaptation techniques, which compensates mismatches between interfaces. Our approach aims at using results of Software Adaptation in order to also provide reconfiguration capabilities to black-box components. This paper provides two contributions: (i) a formal framework that unifies behavioural adaptation and structural reconfiguration of components; this is used for statically reasoning whether it is possible to reconfigure a system. And (ii), two cases of reconfiguration in a client/server system in which the server is substituted by another one with a different behavioural interface, and the system keeps on working transparently from the client's point of view.