A framework for supporting dynamic systems co-evolution

Abstract

Businesses and their supporting software evolve to accommodate the constant revision and re-negotiation of commercial goals, and to intercept the potential of new technology. We have adopted the term co-evolution to describe the concept of the business and the software evolving sympathetically, but at potentially different rates. More generally, we extend co-evolution to accommodate wide-informatics systems, that are assembled from parts that co-evolve with each other and their environment, and whose behavior is potentially emergent. Typically these are long-lived systems in which dynamic co-evolution, whereby a system evolves as part of its own execution in reaction to both expected and unexpected events, is the only feasible 262 Autom Softw Eng (2007) 14: option for change. Examples of such systems include continuously running business process models, sensor nets, grid applications, self-adapting/tuning systems, peer-topeer routing systems, control systems, autonomic systems, and pervasive computing applications.The contribution of this paper comprises: a study of the intrinsic nature of dynamic co-evolving systems; the derivation of a set of intrinsic requirements; a description of a model and a set of technologies, new and extant, to meet these intrinsic requirements; and illustrations of how these technologies may be implemented within an architecture description language (ArchWare ADL) and a conventional programming language (Java). The model and technologies address three topics: structuring for dynamic co-evolution, incremental design, and adapting dynamic co-evolving systems. The combination yields a framework that can describe the system's specification, the executing software and the reflective evolutionary mechanisms within a single computational domain in which all three may evolve in tandem.

A Reflective Approach for Supporting the Dynamic Evolution of Component Types

“…However, the main disadvantage is that all the evolution mechanisms are centralized, under the assumption that all the subsystems must be reconfigurable and accessible. Morrison et al [22] describes evolvable systems as structured in two functional processes: a Producer, which provides the system behaviour (i.e. an architecture), and an Evolver, which is able to evolve this behaviour (i.e.…”

Understanding a Co-Evolution Model of Business and IT for Dynamic Business Process Requirements

“…Contrary to this if changing business requirements are not supported by the IT a gap is created due to absence of co-evolution in turn decrease in efficiency of the business happens. Morrison et al [6] used the co-evolution term for describing evolution in both business and IT at different rate. Business requirements or supporting technologies are evolved due to internal or external changes.…”

Dynamic Evolution and Reconfiguration of Software Architectures Through Aspects

“…The interesting point here, as stated by other authors (Hellerstein et al, 2004), (Morrison et al, 2007), is that these ideas are also applicable in the development of adaptive/reconfigurable software systems. Software systems have the benefit of being more malleable than hardware systems.…”

“…The Evolver-Producer model (Morrison et al, 2007) is a conceptual framework for the description of evolving systems with a decentralized nature. The framework is based on the concept of locus, producer and evolver.…”

“…For more details about the complete PRISMA AOADL, see (Morrison et al, 2007) (Tewari & Milenkovic, 2006) .............................................................. 87 …”