Static and dynamic property-preserving updates

Systems need to be updated to last for a long time in a dynamic environment. The update can be performed both statically, by restarting the system, or dynamically. Updates have to preserve the desirable properties of the system, while possibly enforcing new ones. We consider a simple yet general update mechanism, replacing a component of the system with a new one. We define contexts and components as Constraint Automata interacting via either asynchronous or synchronous communication, and we express properties using Constraint Automata too. Then we build most general updates preserving specific properties, considering both a single property and all the properties satisfied by the original system, in a given context or in all possible contexts. To tackle also dynamic update, we consider the state transfer problem, namely how to find the state in which the new component should be started to ensure a correct overall behaviour.