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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Stephen RiddleORCiD, Nigel Jefferson
System designers using off-the-shelf components (OTSCs), whose internals they cannot change, often use add-on "wrappers" to adapt the OTSCs' behaviour as required. In most cases, wrappers are used to change "functional" properties of the components they wrap. In this paper we discuss instead "protective wrapping", the use of wrappers to improve the dependability - i.e., "non-functional" properties like availability, reliability, security, and/or safety - of a component and thus of a system. Wrappers can improve dependability by adding fault tolerance, e.g. graceful degradation, or error recovery mechanisms. We discuss the rational specification of such protective wrappers in view of system dependability requirements, and highlight some of the design trade-offs and uncertainties affecting system design with OTSCs and wrappers, and differentiating it from other forms of fault-tolerant design.
Author(s): van der Meulen M, Riddle S, Strigini L, Jefferson N
Publication type: Report
Publication status: Published
Series Title: School of Computing Science Technical Report Series
Year: 2004
Pages: 12
Print publication date: 01/08/2004
Source Publication Date: August 2004
Report Number: 857
Institution: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Place Published: Newcastle upon Tyne
URL: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/trs/papers/857.pdf
