Language Support for Modular Autonomic Managers in Reconfigurable Software Components

Dynamic reconfiguration is a key capability of Component-based Software Systems to achieve self-adaptation as it provides means to cope with environment changes at runtime. The space of configurations is defined by the possible assemblies of components, and navigating this space while achieving goals and maintaining structural properties is managed in an autonomic loop. The natural architectural structure of component-based systems calls for hierarchy and modularity in the design and implementation of composites and their managers, and requires support for coordinated multiple autonomic loops. In this paper, we leverage the modularity capability to strengthen the Domain-Specific Language (DSL) Ctrl-F, targeted at the design of autonomic managers in component-based systems. Its original definition involved discrete control-theoretical management of reconfigurations, providing assurances on the automated behaviors. The objective of modularity is two-fold: from the design perspective, it allows designers to seamlessly decompose a complex system into smaller pieces of reusable architectural elements and adaptive behaviours. From the compilation point of view, we provide a systematical and generative approach to decompose control problems described in the architectural level while relying on mechanisms of modular Discrete Control Synthesis (DCS), which allows us to cope with the combinatorial complexity that is inherent to DCS problems. We show the applicability of our approach by applying it to the self-adaptive case study of the existing RUBiS/Brownout eBay-like web auction system.