Exploratory Self-Adaptation in Software Systems

This paper applies the concept of exploratory change to self-adaptive software systems and proposes and briefly specifies a new paradigm for self-adaptation named exploratory self-adaptation. In exploratory self-adaptation exploratory changes are continuously introduced into the software system as hypothetical improvements of its functional characteristics or quality attributes. Once introduced, these changes are evaluated: if the evaluation is positive, they remain and the system has self-adapted, otherwise the changes are rolled back.