The continuous requirements of evolving a delivered software system and the rising cost of shutting down a running software system are forcing researchers and practitioners to find ways of updating software as it runs. Dynamic update is a kind of software evolution that updates a running program without interruption. This paper covers the fundamental issues of the mechanisms of dynamic update theoretically. Based on a similarity analysis of many typical approaches to dynamic update during the past decades, we propose a unified formal model (namely, Dynamic Update Connector) to specify mechanisms of updating an architectural component, and reason about its properties. The model borrows the concept of connectors from software architecture community and is specified using process algebra CSP. We also demonstrate the applications of our DUC model.
As a new software paradigm evolved by the Internet, Internetware brings many challenges for the traditional software development methods and techniques. Though architecture-based component composition (ABC) approach is originated in the traditional software paradigm, it supports the engineering of Internetware effectively due to its philosophy, rationales and mechanisms. ABC has three major contributions to the engineering of Internetware in detail. First, the feature oriented domain modeling method can structure the "disordered" "software entities" to "ordered Internetware" bottom-up in the problem space. Second, the architecture centric design and analysis method can support the development of self-adaptive Internetware. Third, the component operating platform is a reflective and self-adaptive middleware that not only provides Internetware with a powerful and flexible runtime infrastructure but also enables the self-adaptation of the structure and individual entities of Internetware.The Internet development brings new challenges to the information technology which requires innovation of the present technologies, meanwhile, it produces multi-hotspot fields about information technology research and practice. For example, the grid management discusses the future application and construction model for the network systems from the perspective of resource sharing and management; from the perspective of humancomputer interaction, the pervasive computing discusses how future network applications will be used and operated ubiquitously; the service computing emphasizes the idea of "software as a service" and proposes a new software paradigm that pays special attention to the coordination and dynamism of services; the model-driven development is based on domain-specific code generation and focuses on middleware-based development methods and techniques. Almost all of the work can be considered as attempts to review, rethink and evolve the information technology from some new perspectives. Similarly, Internetware grounds itself in the open, dynamic and ever-changing Internet
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