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Title
Dynamic Architecture Reconfiguration Method for Cloud Application Architectures
Authors
Miguel A. Zuñiga-Prieto
Javier González Huerta
Silvia Abrahao
Published in
Software: Practice and Experience, Special Issue on Design Methods for Software Architectures in the Service-Oriented Computing and Cloud Paradigms, Wiley, 2017. - 2017
Abstract
Service-based cloud applications are software systems that continuously evolve to satisfy new user requirements and technology changes. This kind of applications also require elasticity, scalability and high-availability, which means that deployment of new functionalities or architectural adaptations to fulfill Service Level Agreements should be done while the application is in execution. Dynamic architectural reconfiguration is essential to minimize system disruptions while new or modified services are being integrated into existing cloud applications. Thus, cloud applications should be developed following principles that support dynamic reconfiguration of services and tools to automate these reconfigurations at runtime are needed. This paper presents an extension of a model-driven method for dynamic and incremental architecture reconfiguration of cloud services that allows developers to specify new services as software increments, and the tool support to generate the implementation code for the services integration logic and the deployment and architectural reconfiguration scripts specific to the cloud platform in which the service will be deployed (e.g., Microsoft Azure). We also report the results of a quasi-experiment to empirically validate the method, carried out by 20 participants, to evaluate their perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived intention to use. Results show that the participants perceive the method to be useful and they also expressed their intention to use the method in the future. Although further experiments must be carried out to corroborate these results, the method has proven to be a promising architectural reconfiguration process for cloud applications that are developed following agile and incremental development processes.


BibTeX
@misc{issi_web:id:476,
        title =  "Dynamic Architecture Reconfiguration Method for Cloud Application Architectures",
        author = "Miguel A.  Zuñiga-Prieto and Javier González Huerta and Silvia Abrahao",
        booktitle = "Software: Practice and Experience, Special Issue on Design Methods for Software Architectures in the Service-Oriented Computing and Cloud Paradigms, Wiley, 2017.",
        year = "2017",
        eprint = "http://issi.dsic.upv.es/publications/archives/",
        url = "",
        abstract = "Service-based cloud applications are software systems that continuously evolve to satisfy
new user requirements and technology changes. This kind of applications also require elasticity,
scalability and high-availability, which means that deployment of new functionalities
or architectural adaptations to fulfill Service Level Agreements should be done while
the application is in execution. Dynamic architectural reconfiguration is essential to minimize
system disruptions while new or modified services are being integrated into existing
cloud applications. Thus, cloud applications should be developed following principles that
support dynamic reconfiguration of services and tools to automate these reconfigurations
at runtime are needed. This paper presents an extension of a model-driven method for dynamic
and incremental architecture reconfiguration of cloud services that allows developers
to specify new services as software increments, and the tool support to generate the
implementation code for the services integration logic and the deployment and architectural
reconfiguration scripts specific to the cloud platform in which the service will be deployed
(e.g., Microsoft Azure). We also report the results of a quasi-experiment to empirically
validate the method, carried out by 20 participants, to evaluate their perceived ease
of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived intention to use. Results show that the participants
perceive the method to be useful and they also expressed their intention to use the
method in the future. Although further experiments must be carried out to corroborate these
results, the method has proven to be a promising architectural reconfiguration process for
cloud applications that are developed following agile and incremental development processes."
}