Towards performance-aware engineering of autonomic component ensembles

Abstract

Ensembles of autonomic components are a novel software engineering paradigm for development of open-ended distributed highly dynamic software systems (e.g. smart cyber-physical systems). Recent research centered around the concept of ensemble-based systems resulted in design and development models that aim to systematize and simplify the engineering process of autonomic components and their ensembles. These methods highlight the importance of covering both the functional concepts and the non-functional properties, specifically performance-related aspects of the future systems. In this paper we propose an integration of the emerging techniques for performance assessment and awareness into different stages of the development process. Our goal is to aid both designers and developers of autonomic component ensembles with methods providing performance awareness throughout the entire development life cycle (including runtime).