How to Combine Parameter and Compositional Adaptation in the Modeling of Self-Adaptive Applications

ABSTRACT

Computing technology quickly pervades our living environment. We are getting used to carrying with us powerful devices with computing and communication capabilities. The execution context of applications on these devices changes continuously and applications need to adapt in a self-organizing manner, to retain their usefulness. Parameter and compositional adaptation are two frequently used mechanisms for self-adaptive applications in pervasive computing environments. Both of them have advantages as well as disadvantages. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive model-driven application development approach that combines the two concepts, in order to benefit from the advantages of both mechanisms and to reduce development effort. In this paper, we present a modeling approach for self-adaptive applications that combines parameter and compositional adaptation in an integrated, homogeneous fashion. The resulting adaptation model is automatically transformed to source code which is used by the middleware to manage the adaptation at application run-time. The approach was successfully tested in the development of two comprehensive pilot applications.