Reactive Architectures with Architectural Agents

This paper discusses dynamic reconfiguration of applications at the architectural level. Current work on dynamic aspects of software architectures has focused on planned reconfigurations controlled from the outside. In this paper we present a different approach, using architectural agents. The agent-enabled architecture descriptions will be executable and have a mechanism to describe reconfiguration events. The agents can be used during design and directly reused in the implementation phase. We also describe the properties of an initial implementation of the Reactive Architecture Tool, which provides support for design and implementation of reactive architectures.