Specification and implementation of reconfigurable distributed applications

A new model for distributed applications which integrates application management and communication aspects is presented. Based on this model, we introduce a specification technique for distributed applications consisting of an interface language, component language and configuration language. Novel features are the specification of a cooperation protocol to describe the permissible behaviour of components and different binding mechanisms for static and dynamic binding establishment. At configuration level a specification can be enriched with constraints representing invariants of a distributed application valid at all time. Reconfiguration is specified using instantiation, termination, and reconfiguration rules. This permits the formulation of reconfiguration activities, such as participation of new component instances, as part of an application specification. Finally, we present an object-oriented implementation technique of our approach in C++