A Formal Framework for On-line Software Version Change

  • Authors:
  • Deepak Gupta;Pankaj Jalote;Gautam Barua

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 1996

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Abstract

The usual way of installing a new version of a software system is to shut down the running program and then install the new version. This necessitates a sometimes unacceptable delay during which service is denied to the users of the software. An on-line software replacement system replaces parts of the software while it is in execution, thus eliminating the shutdown. While a number of implementations of on-line version change systems have been described in the literature, little investigation has been done on its theoretical aspects. In this paper, we describe a formal framework for studying on-line software version change. We give a general definition of validity of an on-line change, show that it is in general undecidable and then develop sufficient conditions for ensuring validity for a procedural language.