Surgeon: A Packager for Dynamically Reconfigurable Distributed Applications

Annotation: Describes a way to package an upgrade to software components in a distributed system. Packaging analyzes interface bindings, determines how components should be integrated, generates interface software to connect components, and creates configuration commands to build the application. A ``catalyst'' module on each node actually runs reconfigurations using a package (cf. the UL). Packaging may require component participation to save the state, transform state, restart the component, or delay upgrades until a suitable point (so that consistency can be maintained). The authors categorize the kinds of components that can be reconfigured without any such participation: these are those modules that neither require state transfer, nor special initialization, nor synchronization with other modules.

BibTeX entry:

@inproceedings{hofmeister92surgeon,
   author = {C. Hofmeister and E. White and J. Purtilo},
   title = {{Surgeon}: {A} Packager for Dynamically Reconfigurable
	Distributed Applications},
   booktitle = {Intl. Workshop on Configurable Dist. Systems},
   pages = {164--175},
   address = {London, England},
   month = mar,
   year = {1992},
   note = {Also in [swej93mar], pages 95--101}
}