En-Gauging Architectures

Abstract : The goals of the En-gauging Architectures project were (1) to provide community infrastructure that allows programmers to dynamically place probes and gauges into running systems, and (2) to provide dynamic architecture modeling support, specifically for architecture gauges and reconfiguration. In support of (1), our approach was to abstract the experience gained from the Instrumented Connector technology, which allows complex COTS systems running on the Windows platform to be probed, to identify a common run-time infrastructure for a variety of such probe technologies and the facilities needed for those probes to provide inputs to a broad set of gauges. Several DASADA contractors tested the viability of that design by implementing it for their own probe technologies. In support of (2), we developed a COTS infrastructure for analyzing and manipulating architecture models expressed in the Acme architecture description language. We used PowerPoint as an Acme Design Editor that monitors the actual run-time architecture of a system, reifies it into an Acme architecture model, and animates its dynamic behavior through architecture gauges reflected on the screen as a PowerPoint presentation.