Workshop
held in conjunction with COMPSAC 2002
Systems are upgraded to improve their
functionality, provide new services, correct faults and accommodate changes in
the system environment. The number of application areas in which systems should
be able to deliver continuous reliable service during on-line upgrades is
growing. On-line system upgrading is nowadays quickly becoming an issue
affecting the success of many an enterprise. It can, for example, reduce the
downtime of telecommunication services, allow for on-the-fly bug corrections of
space mission software and make it possible to dynamically change a complex
Internet application built as an integration of existing independent web
services.
The complexity of modern applications is
very high and on-line upgrading should not be performed in an ad hoc fashion.
Several international organisations (including OMG and Java Community Process)
are working on proposals for specifying models and APIs supporting on-line
system upgrades. There is a need to design general systematic and practical
methods and techniques supporting development and deployment of upgradable
systems.
System dependability is a crucial
property that must not be undermined during upgrading or as a result of it.
Besides, it should be possible to use the natural redundancy of having both the
upgraded and old software to allow for a smooth transition to the old version
if necessary.
The main theme of the workshop is to develop approaches to dependable systematic
on-line system upgrading. The workshop aims at
We are interested in submissions from
both industry and academia on all topics related to on-line upgrading of distributed
systems. These include, but are not limited to:
11.00-12.30 Session 1 -
Chair Iain Smith
- welcome A. Romanovsky
- invited talk. Mark E. Segal.
Online Software Upgrading: New Research Directions and Practical
Considerations. Telcordia Technologies. (45 mins)
- Improving service availability via
low-outage upgrades. Chryssa Dislis. Motorola Ireland Ltd., Ireland (15 mins)
- A Case Study of Dependable
Software Upgrade with Distributed Components. Xueshan Shan, J. Jenny Li. Avaya
Labs., USA (15 mins)
- Dynamic On-line Object Update in
the Grumps System. Huw Evans. Glasgow University. Scotland (15 mins)
14.00-15.30 Session 2 -
Chair Cliff Jones
- invited talk. Louise Moser. Online
Upgrades Become Standard. Eternal Systems, Inc. (45 mins)(slides)
- A Structured Approach to Handling
On-Line Interface Upgrades. Cliff Jones, Alexander Romanovsky, Ian Welch.
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (15 mins) (slides)
- The Architecture of a Dynamically
Updatable, Component-based System. Robert Pawel Bialek. University of
Copenhagen, Denmark (15 mins)(slides)
- Metadata Support for Safe
Component Upgrades. Premysl Brada. University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech
Republic (15 mins)(slides)
16.00-16.30 session 3 -
Chair Francis Tam
- Dynamically Evolvable Distributed
Systems. Raju Pandey, Scott Malabarba, Tim Stapko, Brant Hashii. University of
California, Davis, USA (15 mins)
- Using RAIC for Dependable On-line
Upgrading of Distributed Systems. Chang Liu, Debra J. Richardson. University of
California, Irvine, USA (15 mins)
- Discussion - moderator A.
Romanovsky (60 mins). Possible topics of discussion:
why we all and each of us are here; definitions
of "online upgrading"; best and worst examples/applications of
upgrading; taxonomy; challenges and agenda of future research; current projects
of relevance; push from industry: is industry ahead of academia here? standartisation
activities; upgrading at all phases of the software development life cycle; forgotten
lessons/research from the past.
Invited Talks
Dr. Mark
E. Segal (Executive Director, Software Technology
Research, Telcordia Technologies) and Prof. Louise Moser (Eternal Systems, Inc.) will deliver keynote speeches as a part of the
workshop program.
Mark E.
Segal - Online Software Upgrading: New Research Directions and Practical
Considerations
In this
talk we describe several areas of research in online software upgrading where
more attention is needed. In
particular, we identify some security issues that must be addressed in systems
that provide online upgrading capabilities for applications running on hosts
connected to the Internet. We also
discuss what our research community must do to make our research more
practicable in production systems.
Louise
Moser - Online Upgrades Become Standard.
This
talk will discuss the recent development of an Online Upgrade specification
within the Object Management Group.
The Online Upgrade specification defines primitive interfaces and
mechanisms that can be used to change the code of an application program while
it continues to execute. The
specification aims to facilitate the safe and orderly upgrading of application
objects, without loss of data or processing, in a manner that is both portable
and interoperable.
Regular
papers accepted for publication in the workshop proceedings:
1. Improving service availability via
low-outage upgrades. Chryssa Dislis. Motorola Ireland Ltd., Cork, Ireland. (draft of the paper)
2. Dynamic On-line Object Update in the
Grumps System. Huw Evans, Department of Computing Science, Glasgow University,
Glasgow, Scotland.
(draft of the paper)
3. A Structured Approach to Handling
On-Line Interface Upgrades. Cliff Jones, Alexander Romanovsky, Ian Welch.
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. (draft of the paper)
4. Using RAIC for Dependable On-line
Upgrading of Distributed Systems. Chang Liu, Debra J. Richardson. Information
and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, USA. (draft of the paper)
5. The Architecture of a Dynamically
Updatable, Component-based System. Robert Pawel Bialek. Department of Computer
Science. University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. (draft of the paper)
6. Metadata Support for Safe Component
Upgrades. Premysl Brada. University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic. (draft of the paper)
7.
Dynamically Evolvable Distributed Systems. Raju Pandey, Scott Malabarba,
Tim Stapko, Brant Hashii. Department of Computer Sciences. University of
California, Davis, USA. (draft of
the paper)
8. A Case Study of Dependable Software
Upgrade with Distributed Components. Xueshan Shan, J. Jenny Li. Avaya Labs
(formerly part of Bell Labs). Basking Ridge, USA. (draft of the paper)
9. An Upgrade Mechanism Based on
Publish/Subscribe Interaction. M.R.V. Chaudron, F. van de Laar. Eindhoven
University of Technology, The Netherlands and Philips Research Laboratories,
The Netherlands. (draft of the
paper)
10. Towards Upgrading Actively
Replicated Servers on-the-fly. Marcin Solarski, Hein Meling. Fraunhofer
Gesellschaft, FOKUS, Berlin, Germany and Department of Telematics, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. (draft of the paper)
Workshop Chair:
Steering and Program Committee:
University
of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (cliff.jones@ncl.ac.uk)
Avaya Labs,
USA (jjli@research.avayalabs.com)
Iain Smith
Nokia
Research Center, Finland (francis.tam@nokia.com)