Eventizing Applications in an Adaptive Middleware Platform

Abstract

Adaptive middleware is increasingly being used to provide applications with the ability to adapt to changes such as software evolution, fault tolerance, autonomic behavior, or mobility. It is only by supporting adaptation to such changes that these applications will become truly dependable. In this paper we discuss the use of event based systems as a platform for developing adaptive middleware. Events have the advantage of supporting loosely coupled architectures, which raises the possibility of orthogonally extending applications with the ability to communicate through events. We then use this ability to change the behavior of applications at run time in order to implement the required adaptations. In the paper we briefly describe the mechanisms underlying our approach and show how the resulting system provides a very flexible and powerful platform in a wide range of adaptation scenarios.