mRUBiS: An Exemplar for Model-Based Architectural Self-Healing and Self-Optimization

TL;DR

mRUBiS is an extensible, simulation-based exemplar that provides a runtime architectural model for developing, evaluating, and comparing model-based self-healing and self-optimization in adaptive software systems.

Contribution

It introduces mRUBiS, the first exemplar supporting runtime models for self-adaptation, enabling testing, validation, and comparison of different adaptation strategies.

Findings

Supports injecting issues into the model for testing

Enables evaluation of adaptation engine effectiveness

Facilitates exploring variants of self-adaptation mechanisms

Abstract

Self-adaptive software systems are often structured into an adaptation engine that manages an adaptable software by operating on a runtime model that represents the architecture of the software (model-based architectural self-adaptation). Despite the popularity of such approaches, existing exemplars provide application programming interfaces but no runtime model to develop adaptation engines. Consequently, there does not exist any exemplar that supports developing, evaluating, and comparing model-based self-adaptation off the shelf. Therefore, we present mRUBiS, an extensible exemplar for model-based architectural self-healing and self-optimization. mRUBiS simulates the adaptable software and therefore provides and maintains an architectural runtime model of the software, which can be directly used by adaptation engines to realize and perform self-adaptation. Particularly, mRUBiS supports injecting issues into the model, which should be handled by self-adaptation, and validating the model to assess the self-adaptation. Finally, mRUBiS allows developers to explore variants of adaptation engines (e.g., event-driven self-adaptation) and to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and scalability of the engines.