On re-assembling self-managed components

Self-managed systems need to adapt to changes in requirements and in operational conditions. New components or services may become available, others may become unreliable or fail. Non-functional aspects, such as reliability or other quality-of-service parameters usually drive the selection of new architectural configurations. However, in existing approaches, the link between non-functional aspects and software models is established through manual annotations that require human intervention on each re-configuration and adaptation is enacted through fixed rules that require anticipation of all possible changes. We propose here a methodology to automatically re-assemble services and component-based applications to preserve their reliability. To achieve this we define architectural and behavioural models that are composable, account for non-functional aspects and correspond closely to the implementation. Our approach enables autonomous components to locally adapt and control their internal configuration whilst exposing interface models to upstream components.