No abstract

The evolving complexity of adaptive systems impairs our ability to deliver anomaly-free solutions. Fixing these systems require a deep understanding on the reasons behind decisions which led to faulty or suboptimal system states. Developers thus need diagnosis support that trace system states to the previous circumstances-targeted requirements, input context-that had resulted in these decisions. However, the lack of efficient temporal representation limits the tracing ability of current approaches. To tackle this problem, we describe a novel temporal data model to represent, store and query decisions as well as their relationship with the knowledge (context, requirements, and actions). We validate our approach through a use case based on the smart grid at Luxembourg.

Distributed adaptive systems are composed of federated entities offering remote inspection and reconfiguration abilities. This is often realized using a MAPE-K loop, which constantly evaluates system and environmental parameters and derives corrective actions if necessary. The OpenStack Watcher project uses such a loop to implement resource optimization services for multi-tenant clouds. To ensure a timely reaction in the event of failures, the MAPE-K loop is executed with a high frequency. A major drawback of such reactivity is that many actions, e.g., the migration of containers in the cloud, take more time to be effective and their effects to be measurable than the MAPE-k loop execution frequency. Unfinished actions as well as their expected effects over time are not taken into consideration in MAPE-K loop processes, leading upcoming analysis phases potentially take sub-optimal actions. In this paper, we propose an extended context representation for MAPE-K loop that integrates the history of planned actions as well as their expected effects over time into the context representations. This information can then be used during the upcoming analysis and planning phases to compare measured and expected context metrics. We demonstrate on a cloud elasticity manager case study that such temporal action-aware context leads to improved reasoners while still be highly scalable. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering → Software design engineering; • Computer systems organization → Reconfigurable computing; Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM acknowledges that this contribution was authored or co-authored by an employee, contractor or affiliate of a national government. As such, the Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to publish or reproduce this article, or to allow others to do so, for Government purposes only.

The conviction that big data analytics is a key for the success of modern businesses is growing deeper, and the mobilisation of companies into adopting it becomes increasingly important. Big data integration projects enable companies to capture their relevant data, to efficiently store it, turn it into domain knowledge, and finally monetize it. In this context, historical data, also called temporal data, is becoming increasingly available and delivers means to analyse the history of applications, discover temporal patterns, and predict future trends. Despite the fact that most data that today's applications are dealing with is inherently temporal current approaches, methodologies, and environments for developing these applications don't provide sufficient support for handling time. We envision that Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) would be an appropriate ecosystem for a seamless and orthogonal integration of time into domain modelling and processing. In this paper, we investigate the state-of-the-art in MDE techniques and tools in order to identify the missing bricks for raising time-awareness in MDE and outline research directions in this emerging domain.