An Approach to Dynamic Software Updating for Java

Abstract

To cope with demands for new and extended functionality, software systems must be updated regularly. Some applications, however, need to be continuously available because they are providing services that are important for users at all times. To avoid downtime for software maintenance, applications must be updated at run-time. So the correctness of dynamic updating is very important. In this paper, static analysis is proposed to guarantee the correctness of dynamic updating. In order to make the dynamic updating easier and more flexible, an approach of dynamic software updating for Java application is presented. The method makes use of the dynamic weaving mechanism of AOP and the java class dynamic loading mechanism. In the end, the proposed method is applied in a practical project.