Live upgrades of CORBA applications using object replication

Annotation: Uses replication of CORBA objects to support upgrades without interrupting service. Rather than allowing the system to exist in a hybrid state (i.e., where different objects are at different versions), the upgrade executes an ``atomic switchover'' that changes all objects from one version to another. Reliable, totally-ordered multicast ensures atomicity. If the upgrade changes an objects' interface, all clients that use that interface must also be upgraded at the switchover. Furthermore, all affected objects must be quiescent when the switchover occurs. The system uses wrapper functions to loosen this quiescence requirement (i.e., by translating old calls to new ones). The system provides an ``upgrade preparer'' tool that automatically generates wrapper functions and state transformers given the old and new versions of an object's code. This work follows that of Kramer and Magee, Hofmeister and Purtilo, and Bidan et al.

BibTeX entry:

@inproceedings{tewksbury01live,
   author = {L. A. Tewksbury and L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith},
   title = {Live upgrades of {CORBA} applications using object replication},
   booktitle = {{IEEE} Intl. Conf. on Software Maintenance ({ICSM})},
   pages = {488--497},
   address = {Florence, Italy},
   month = nov,
   year = {2001}
}