Structure analysis for dynamic software architecture

The open and dynamic Internet environment greatly urges software entities that are distributed on different locations to coordinate with each other to accomplish a computing task. Software architecture is applied to abstract the software entities to be components and the coordination between them to be connectors and then a model is extracted as the architecture on which the design, analysis and verification are based. Currently, the notion of dynamic software architectures that can modify their architecture and enact modifications during the system execution has become one of the most active research areas. In this paper, we focus on the dynamic evolution of system structure other than coordination mechanisms (e.g. communication protocols). It is widely recognized that some restrictions should be imposed on the system evolution to ensure that the system structure may remain one style or transform within a scope. These conditions, to a large extent, make the system execute under control as expected.