A Comparison of Planning Based Models for Component Reconfiguration ; CU-CS-995-05

Dynamic Reconfiguration is the process of changing a component-based system with minimum disruption and maximum automation. This process consists of three phases i.e. sensing the present state, planning for a new state and acting on the system to move it to the new state. Although, there are techniques and models for the sensing and acting phases, planning is a relatively neglected phase in this process. We have been using planning for the dynamic reconfiguration of component-based systems. However, planning systems provide different modeling languages. These languages have their own characteristics. Not all of these characteristics are important for the dynamic reconfiguration of software systems. In this paper we compare and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of two planning languages: PDDL (Planning Domain and Definition Language) and AML (Aspen Modeling Language). Although the original target of both of these languages is not dynamic reconfiguration, we will discuss how their features can be used to model planning the dynamic reconfiguration of component based systems.