Design Diverse-Multiple Version Connector: A Fault Tolerant Component Based Architecture

Abstract

Component based software engineering (CBSE) is a new archetype to construct the systems by using reusable components "as it is". To achieve high dependability in such systems, there must be appropriate fault tolerance mechanism in them at the architectural level. This paper presents a fault tolerant component based architecture that relies on the C2 architectural style and is based on design diverse and exception handling fault tolerance strategies. The proposed fault tolerant component architecture employs special-purpose connectors called design diverse-multiple version connectors (DD-MVC). These connectors allow design diverse n-versions of components to run in parallel. The proposed architecture has a Fault tolerant connector (FTC), which detects and tolerates different kinds of errors. The proposed architecture adjusts the tradeoff between dependability and efficiency at run time and exhibits the ability to tolerate the anticipated and unanticipated faults effectively. The applicability of proposed architecture is demonstrated with a case study.