Engineering long-running computing systems that achieve their goals under ever-changing conditions pose significant challenges. Self-adaptation has shown to be a viable approach to dealing with changing conditions. Yet, the capabilities of a self-adaptive system are constrained by its operational design domain (ODD), i.e., the conditions for which the system was built (requirements, constraints, and context). Changes, such as adding new goals or dealing with new contexts, require system evolution. While the system evolution process has been automated substantially, it remains human-driven. Given the growing complexity of computing systems, human-driven evolution will eventually become unmanageable. In this paper, we provide a definition for ODD and apply it to a self-adaptive system. Next, we explain why conditions not covered by the ODD require system evolution. Then, we outline a new approach for self-evolution that leverages the concept of ODD, enabling a system to evolve autonomously to deal with conditions not anticipated by its initial ODD. We conclude with open challenges to realise self-evolution.

Computing systems form the backbone of many areas in our society, from manufacturing to traffic control, healthcare, and financial systems. When software plays a vital role in the design, construction, and operation, these systems are referred to as software-intensive systems. Self-adaptation equips a software-intensive system with a feedback loop that either automates tasks that otherwise need to be performed by human operators or deals with uncertain conditions. Such feedback loops have found their way to a variety of practical applications; typical examples are an elastic cloud to adapt computing resources and automated server management to respond quickly to business needs. To gain insight into the motivations for applying self-adaptation in practice, the problems solved using self-adaptation and how these problems are solved, and the difficulties and risks that industry faces in adopting self-adaptation, we performed a large-scale survey. We received 184 valid responses from practitioners spread over 21 countries. Based on the analysis of the survey data, we provide an empirically grounded overview the of state of the practice in the application of self-adaptation. From that, we derive insights for researchers to check their current research with industrial needs, and for practitioners to compare their current practice in applying self-adaptation. These insights also provide opportunities for applying self-adaptation in practice and pave the way for future industry-research collaborations.

Self-adaptation equips a software system with a feedback loop that automates tasks that otherwise need to be performed by operators. Such feedback loops have found their way to a variety of practical applications, one typical example is an elastic cloud. Yet, the state of the practice in self-adaptation is currently not clear. To get insights into the use of self-adaptation in practice, we are running a large-scale survey with industry. This paper reports preliminary results based on survey data that we obtained from 113 practitioners spread over 16 countries, 62 of them work with concrete self-adaptive systems. We highlight the main insights obtained so far: motivations for self-adaptation, concrete use cases, and difficulties encountered when applying self-adaptation in practice. We conclude the paper with outlining our plans for the remainder of the study.

More than two decades of research have demonstrated an increasing need for software systems to be self-adaptive. Self-adaptation manages runtime dynamics, which are difficult to predict before deployment. A vast body of knowledge to develop Self-Adaptive Software Systems (SASS) has been established. However, we discovered a lack of process support to develop self-adaptive systems with reuse. The lack of process support may hinder knowledge transfer and quality design. To that end, we propose a domain-engineering based methodology, Autonomic Software Product Lines engineering (ASPLe), which provides step-by-step guidelines for developing families of SASS with systematic reuse. The evaluation results from a case study show positive effects on quality and reuse for self-adaptive systems designed using the ASPLe compared to state-of-the-art engineering practices.

Modern software systems and their corresponding architectures are increasingly decentralized, distributed, and dynamic. As a consequence, decentralized mechanisms are required to ensure security in such architectures. Decentralized Information Flow Control (DIFC) is a mechanism to control information flow in distributed systems. This article presents and discusses several improvements to an adaptive decentralized information flow approach that incorporates trust for decentralized systems to provide security. Adaptive Trust-Aware Decentralized Information Flow (AT-DIFC + ) combines decentralized information flow control mechanisms, trust-based methods, and decentralized control architectures to control and enforce information flow in an open, decentralized system. We strengthen our approach against newly discovered attacks and provide additional information about its reconfiguration, decentralized control architectures, and reference implementation. We evaluate the effectiveness and performance of AT-DIFC + on two case studies and perform additional experiments and to gauge the mitigations’ effectiveness against the identified attacks.

This work studies systematic reuse in the context of self-adaptive software systems. In our work, we realized that managing variability for such platforms is different compared to traditional platforms, primarily due to the run-time variability and system uncertainties. Motivated by the fact that recent trends show that self-adaptation will be used more often in future system generation and that software reuse state-of-practice or research do not provide sufficient support, we have investigated the problems and possibly resolutions in this context. We have analyzed variability for these systems, using a systematic reuse prism, and identified a research gap in variability management. The analysis divides variability handling into four activities: (1) identify variability, (2) constrain variability, (3) implement variability, and (4) manage variability. Based on the findings we envision a reuse framework for the specific domain and present an example framework that addresses some of the identified challenges. We argue that it provides basic support for engineering self-adaptive software systems with systematic reuse. We discuss some important avenues of research for achieving the vision.

Traditionally, Embedded Systems (ES) are tightly linked to physical products, and closed both for communication to the surrounding world and to additions or modifications by third parties. New technical solutions are however emerging that allow addition of plug-in software, as well as external communication for both software installation and data exchange. These mechanisms in combination will allow for the construction of Federated Embedded Systems (FES). Expected benefits include the possibility of third-party actors developing add-on functionality; a shorter time to market for new functions; and the ability to upgrade existing products in the field. This will however require not only new technical solutions, but also a transformation of the software ecosystems for ES. This paper aims at providing an initial characterization of the mechanisms that need to be present to make a FES ecosystem successful. This includes identification of the actors, the possible business models, the effects on product development processes, methods and tools, as well as on the product architecture. The research was carried out as an explorative case study based on interviews with 15 senior staff members at 9 companies related to ES that represent different roles in a future ecosystem for FES. The interview data was analyzed and the findings were mapped according to the Business Model Canvas (BMC). The findings from the study describe the main characteristics of a FES ecosystem, and identify the challenges for future research and practice. The case study indicates that new actors exist in the FES ecosystem compared to a traditional supply chain, and that their roles and relations are redefined. The business models include new revenue streams and services, but also create the need for trade-offs between, e.g., openness and dependability in the architecture, as well as new ways of working.

The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in schools promises up-to-date, interactive and collaborative learning content. However, this has proved difficult to fulfill as the requirements from students and teachers combined with devices in a variety of contexts are expensive to meet. Software reuse is a proven way to decrease development time. This paper explores the characteristics of a software ecosystem approach to cater for a new digital school and presents an enhanced reference model developed for the field of technology-enhanced learning (TEL).

The challenges of pervasive and mobile computing environments, which are highly dynamic and unpredictable, have motivated the development of self-adaptive software systems. Although noteworthy successes have been achieved on many fronts, the construction of such systems remains significantly more challenging than traditional systems. We argue this is partially because researchers and practitioners have been struggling with the lack of a precise vocabulary for describing and reasoning about the key architectural characteristics of self-adaptive systems. Further exacerbating the situation is the fact that existing frameworks and guidelines do not provide an encompassing perspective of the different types of concerns in this setting. In this article, we present a comprehensive reference model, entitled FOrmal Reference Model for Self-adaptation (FORMS), that targets both issues. FORMS provides rigor in the manner such systems can be described and reasoned about. It consists of a small number of formally specified modeling elements that correspond to the key concerns in the design of self-adaptive software systems, and a set of relationships that guide their composition. We demonstrate FORMS's ability to precisely describe and reason about the architectural characteristics of distributed self-adaptive software systems through its application to several existing systems. FORMS's expressive power gives it a potential for documenting reusable architectural solutions (e.g., architectural patterns) to commonly encountered problems in this area.

The increasing use of mobile devices to support collaborative activities creates a need for developing new methods and perspectives to facilitate information sharing. In this paper, we present an approach for information sharing in mobile collaborative settings through the use of Mobile Virtual Devices (MVD). MVD emerges as a new conceptualization of an organization of mobile devices that supports collaborative tasks. The use of MVD allows designers and users to interact with and through mobile devices in novel ways, considering the aggregation of mobile devices as a single entity. The notion of MVD has been conceptualized on the idea of multirole devices, using components to provide and consume resources.

This paper discusses on-going work in adaptive architectures concerning automatic adaptation rule derivation. Adaptation is rule-action based but deriving rules that meet the adaptation goals are tedious and error prone. We present an approach that uses model-driven derivation and training for automatically deriving adaptation rules, and exemplify this in an environment for scientific computing.

Recent publications indicate the importance of software engineering in the computer science curriculum. In this paper, we present the final part of software engineering education at University of Groningen in the Netherlands and Vaxjo University in Sweden, where student teams perform an industrial software development project. It furthermore presents the main educational problems encountered in such real-life projects and explains how this international course addresses these problems. The main contribution of this paper is a set of seven good practices for project based software engineering education.

Abstract—The objective of this paper is to ad-dress the design of an architecture for scientific ap-plications utilizing sensor data. The proposed archi-tecture models applications as services in a service-oriented architecture. This architecture is, mapped to a heterogeneous architecture that contains high-performance, data-driven components and SOA-style components, and a superimposed on a service archi-tecture that provides dynamism. I.

Software has for a long time been used for controlling different systems. Today, there is a trend towards integrating more software in consumer electronics, home appliances, cars etc. Suddenly software is moving from traditional environments, such as the desktop computer into new and unknown territory. This will influence many aspects of the software engineering process; above all, several new problems have arisen in the domain of software deployment. How can software be effectively deployed in these environments? Current deployment strategies are not directly applicable. The paper discusses problems with current deployment models and proposes a new, modified model. A deployment model for pervasive computing must support component based development, different delivery models, and installation and activation strategies. Support for dynamic installation and activation (i.e. making modifications without de-activating the software), is especially important. We introduce a prototype implementation, the Java Distributed Run-time Updating Management System (JDRUMS), which we have used as a vehicle for eliciting requirements for our deployment model.