Using Event-Based Translation to Support Dynamic Protocol Evolution

  • Authors:
  • Nathan D. Ryan;Alexander L. Wolf

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Colorado;University of Colorado

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

All systems built from distributed components involve theuse of one or more protocols for inter-component communication.Whether these protocols are based on a broadlyused "standard" or are specially designed for a particularapplication, they are likely to evolve. The goal of the workdescribed here is to contribute techniques that can supportprotocol evolution. We are concerned not with how or whya protocol might evolve, or even whether that evolution isin some sense correct. Rather, our concern is with making itpossible for applications to accommodate protocol changesdynamically. Our approach is based on a method for isolatingthe syntactic details of a protocol from the semanticconcepts manipulated within components. Protocol syntaxis formally specified in terms of tokens, message structures,and message sequences. Event-based translation techniquesare used in a novel way to present to the application the semanticconcepts embodied by these syntactic elements. Weillustrate our approach by showing how it would support anHTTP 1.1 client interacting with an HTTP 1.0 server.