A dependable architecture for COTS-based software systems using protective wrappers

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software components are built to be used as black boxes that cannot be modified. The specific context in which these COTS components are employed is not known to their developers. When integrating such COTS components into systems, which have high dependability requirements, there may be mismatches between the failure assumptions of these components and the rest of the system. For resolving these mismatches, system integrators must rely on techniques that are external to the COTS software components. In this paper, we combine the concepts of an idealised architectural component and protective wrappers to develop an architectural solution that provides an effective and systematic way for building dependable software systems from COTS software components.306914416