An Idealized Fault-Tolerant Architectural Component

Component-based systems built from existing software components are being used in a wide range of applications that have high dependability requirements. In order to achieve the required levels of reliability and availability, it is necessary to incorporate into these complex systems means for coping with software faults. However, the problem is exacerbated if we consider the current trend of integrating third-party software components, which allow neither code inspection nor changes. To leverage the reliability properties of these systems, we need solutions at the architectural level that are able to guide the structuring of unreliable components into a fault tolerant architecture. In this paper, we present an approach for structuring fault tolerant component-based systems based on the C2 architectural style.