An Architecture for Configurable Dependability of Application Services

Many human activities today depend critically on systems where substantial functionality has been realized using complex software. Therefore, appropriate means to achieve a sufficient degree for dependability are required, which use the available information about the software components and the system architecture. For the special case of servicebased architectures – an architecture proposed to cope with the complexity and dynamics of today’s systems – we identify in this paper a set of architectural principles which can be used to improve dependability. A service-based architecture which extends Jini and employs the identified architectural principles is further proposed and realized. The dependable operation of the infrastructure services of the architecture further enables to systematically control and configure some dependability attributes of application ser-