A Framework for Statechart Based Component Reconfiguration

Abstract

This article describes a reconfiguration mechanism for statechart-based software components and presents a framework that supports it. The reconfiguration capability that each component acquires can be used as a mechanism for self-healing and better adapting the component to environmental condition variations. The latter can also be considered as a support for coping with incomplete or bad specifications due to the lack of exact knowledge of the environment. It will also be shown that it can be used to easier resolve composition issues when creating a system by means of component-composition. This framework helps creating statechart based components that reside in the middle ground between a blackbox component and an statechart interpreter. In addition to supporting a Model Driven development style, the framework creates a reflective architecture of the component without any involvement from the developer. This reflectiveness adds the ability to modify the component’s statechart model at run-time and can be used as a basis for a self healing mechanism.