Towards self-healing systems via dependable architecture and reflective middleware

Self-healing systems focus on how to reducing the complexity and cost of the management of dependability policies and mechanisms without human intervention. This position paper proposes a systematic approach to self-healing systems via dependable architecture and reflective middleware. Firstly, the differences between self-healing systems and traditional dependable systems are illustrated via the construction of a dependable computing model. Secondly, reflective middleware is incorporated into the dependable computing model for investigating the feasibility and benefits of implementing self-healing systems by reflective middleware. Thirdly, dependable architectures are introduced for providing application specific knowledge related to self-healing. Fourthly, an architecture based deployment tool is implemented for deploying dependable architectures into heterogeneous and distribute environments. Finally, an architecture based reflective J2EE application server, called PKUAS, is implemented for interpreting and enforcing dependable architectures at runtime, that is, discovering or predicting and recovering or preventing failures automatically under the guide of dependable architectures.