Retrofitting controlled dynamic reconfiguration into the architecture description language MontiArcAutomaton

Component & connector architecture description languages (C&C ADLs) provide hierarchical decomposition of system functionality into components and their interaction. Most ADLs fix interaction configurations at design time while some express dynamic reconfiguration of components to adapt to runtime changes. Implementing dynamic reconfiguration in a static C&C ADL by encoding it into component behavior creates implicit dependencies between components and forfeits the abstraction of behavior paramount to C&C models. We developed a mechanism for retrofitting dynamic reconfiguration into the static C&C ADL MontiArcAutomaton. This mechanism lifts reconfiguration to an architecture concern and allows to preserve encapsulation and abstraction of C&C ADLs. Our approach enables efficient retrofitting by a smooth integration of reconfiguration semantics and encapsulation. The new dynamic C&C ADL is fully backwards compatible and well-formedness of configurations can be statically checked at design time. Our work provides dynamic reconfiguration for the C&C ADL MontiArcAutomaton.