Temporal Specifications of Component Based Systems with Polymorphic Dynamic Reconfiguration

In this chapter, we present a formal characterisation of component based systems with support for polymorphic dynamic reconfiguration. By dynamic reconfiguration we mean, as usual, changes in the system architecture at run time. By polymorphic reconfiguration we mean that reconfiguration operations may concern different types of components or connections, exploiting an inheritance relationship over components, as in object orientation.

The formal characterisation of component based systems is based on a first-order temporal logic. The logic is a variant of the Manna-Pnueli logic, expressive enough for straightforward specification of component types, connector types and dynamic amalgamations of components. On top of this logic, and in the form of a (rather low level) specification language, we build the necessary machinery for specifying components, connectors and amalgamations, together with inheritance and polymorphism.