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Handbook of Software Engineering pp 399–443Cite as

Software Engineering of Self-adaptive Systems

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Abstract

Modern software systems are expected to operate under uncertain conditions, without interruption. Possible causes of uncertainties include changes in the operational environment, dynamics in the availability of resources, and variations of user goals. The aim of self-adaptation is to let the system collect additional data about the uncertainties during operation. The system uses the additional data to resolve uncertainties, to reason about itself, and based on its goals to reconfigure or adjust itself to satisfy the changing conditions, or if necessary to degrade gracefully. In this chapter, we provide a particular perspective on the evolution of the field of self-adaptation in six waves. These waves put complementary aspects of engineering self-adaptive systems in focus that synergistically have contributed to the current knowledge in the field. From the presented perspective on the field, we outline a number of challenges for future research in self-adaptation, both in a short and long term.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Sungdeok Cha, Kenji Tei, Nelly Bencomo, Vitor Souza, Usman Iftikhar, Stepan Shevtsov, and Dimitri Van Landuyt for the invaluable feedback they provided on earlier versions of this chapter. I thank the editors of the book to which this chapter belongs for their support. Finally, I thank Springer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Danny Weyns

  2. Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

    Danny Weyns

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Informatics, Korea University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Sungdeok Cha

  2. University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Richard N. Taylor

  3. Professor Emeritus, POSTECH, Pohang, Korea (Republic of)

    Kyochul Kang

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Weyns, D. (2019). Software Engineering of Self-adaptive Systems. In: Cha, S., Taylor, R., Kang, K. (eds) Handbook of Software Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00262-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00262-6_11

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