Towards preserving correctness in self-managed software systems

Currently, paradigms such as component-based software development and service-oriented software architectures promote modularization of software systems into highly decoupled and reusable software components and services. In addition, to improve manageability and evolveability, software systems are extended with management capabilities and self-managed behavior. Because of their very nature, these self-managed software systems often are mission critical and highly available. In this paper, we focus on the complexity of preserving correctness in modularized self-managed systems. We discuss the importance of consistent software compositions in the context of self-managed systems, and the need for a correctness-preserving adaptation process. We also give a flavor of possible approaches for preserving correctness, and conclude with some remarks and open questions.