Title
Adaptability using reflection
Abstract
Adaptability, i.e. the ability of a system to adapt dynamically to changes in its execution environment, is considered as an important property of computer systems. Scaling directory replication in name servers and load balancing are well known examples. However, adaptability in today's systems, if present at all, generally is burnt in and dedicated to singular properties of the execution environment. The authors discuss a more universal approach to adaptability. The approach is based on the/spl minus/in some cases artificial/spl minus/separation of nonfunctional properties from the functionality of application systems. The scheme provides full control over nonfunctional properties while preserving transparency for the application programs. To study that approach, reflection has been incorporated into the BirliX object model and its implementation. It has been used to experiment with some nonfunctional properties such as migration and protection. The authors motivate the need for a universal adaptability scheme, revisit reflection as used in programming language systems and discuss design decisions for reflective systems, describe the resulting reflective BirliX model and its implementation and finally describe applications.<>
Year
DOI
Venue
1994
10.1109/HICSS.1994.323245
HICSS (2)
Keywords
Field
DocType
universal approach,scaling directory replication,reflective systems,design decisions,programming language systems,name servers,nonfunctional properties,data structures,reflection,application programs,operating systems (computers),universal adaptability scheme,computer systems,object-oriented programming,birlix object model,transparency,load balancing,object-oriented languages,adaptability,execution environment,object oriented programming,operating systems,object oriented languages,load balance
Adaptability,Data structure,Software engineering,Object-oriented programming,Load balancing (computing),Computer science,Directory,Object model,Software,Name server,Distributed computing
Conference
Volume
Citations 
PageRank 
2
6
0.76
References 
Authors
11
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Susann Sonntag160.76
Hermann Härtig268664.40
Oliver C. Kowalski3357.15
Winfried E. Kühnhauser45515.07
Wolfgang Lux5626.02