Architectural styles for runtime software adaptation

TLDR

Runtime adaptability—changing an application’s behavior during execution—is increasingly vital, yet its feasibility depends largely on architectural choices, with some styles inherently more supportive of dynamic change. The study evaluates various architectural styles using the BASE framework. The authors use the BASE framework to assess how REST, event‑based, service‑oriented, and peer‑to‑peer styles support behavior, state, execution context changes, and asynchronous adaptation.

Abstract

Runtime software adaptability - the ability to change an application's behavior during runtime - is an increasingly important capability for systems, both to support continuous operation and to support a good user experience. Achieving such adaptability may be very hard or easy; the degree of difficulty will largely reflect choices made in a system's architecture. Some architectural styles are much more supportive of dynamic change than others. This paper examines a range of styles and assesses them with respect to a four-element evaluation framework, called BASE. The framework considers how a style supports changes to behavior, state, its execution context, and supports asynchrony of change. Styles considered include REST, event-based, service-oriented, and peer-to-peer.