While many data stream systems have to provide continuous (24x7) services with no acceptable downtime, they also have to cope with changes in their execution environments and in the requirements that they must comply (e.g., moving from on-premises architecture to a cloud system, changing the network technology, adding new functionality or modifying existing parts). On one hand, dynamic software reconfiguration (i.e., the capability of evolving on the fly) is a desirable feature. On the other hand, stream systems may suffer from the disruption and overhead caused by the reconfiguration. Due to the necessity of reconfiguring (i.e., evolving) the system whilst the system must not be disrupted (i.e., blocked), consistent and non-disruptive reconfiguration is still considered an open problem. This thesis presents and validates a non-quiescent approach for dynamic software reconfiguration that preserves the consistency of distributed data stream processing systems. Unlike many works that require the system to reach a safe state (e.g., quiescence) before performing a reconfiguration, the proposed approach enables the system to smoothly evolve (i.e., be reconfigured) in a non-disruptive way without reaching quiescence. The evaluation indicates that the proposed approach supports consistent distributed reconfiguration and has negligible impact on availability and performance. Furthermore, the implementation of the proposed approach showed better performance results in all experiments than the quiescent approach and Upstart.