Indirect dependencies in dynamic reconfiguration of component-based systems

In many real-world contexts, component-based systems need to modify their behavior or structure at run time in order to adapt changes of user requirements or working environments. Change management is an essential part of reconfigurable systems. Dynamic reconfiguration helps these systems to evolve incrementally from one configuration to another at execution time. Many approaches have been proposed to support dynamic reconfiguration in various kinds of systems. Usually, a Component-Based System (CBS) has two kinds of dependencies. The first one is the direct dependency which arises from the direct connections of each component with its neighbors. The other kind is the indirect dependency which arises from the unconnected components which potentially depend on each other. This paper investigates the relationship between the indirect dependency and the dynamic reconfiguration. It proposes a solution to dynamic reconfiguration, which takes in consideration the indirect dependency between the components.