Monitoring architectural properties in dynamic component-based systems

Modern systems are increasingly required to be capable to evolve at run-time, in particular allowing for the dynamic plugging of new features. It is important that this evolution happens preserving some established properties (which can concern the structure, the interaction patterns, or crucial extra-functional properties, such as reliability or security), and due to dynamicity this needs to be checked at run-time, as the changes occur. In this work we consider evolving component-based systems formed by a kernel architecture to which new components can be plugged in at run-time, and introduce the MOSAICO approach for the run-time monitoring of architectural properties. MOSAICO uses Aspect-oriented technologies for instrumenting and monitoring the system according to selected architectural properties. MOSAICO can handle evolving black-box component systems since it continuously watches the events occurring at the extension points of the kernel architecture.The application of a prototype implementation of MOSAICO, capable to handle interaction pattern properties, is illustrated on the NewsFeeder case study.