Towards testing self-organizing, adaptive systems

Abstract

The characteristics of self-adaptive, self-organizing systems lead to a significant higher flexibility and robustness against a changing environment. This flexibility makes it hard to test these systems adequately. To assure their quality, however, it is inevitable to do so. We introduce a new approach for systematically testing these self-* systems based on a feedback control-oriented system architecture called Corridor Enforcing Infrastructure (CEI). Thus, it is possible to examine particular situations, where the system is forced to reorganize or adapt to new situations. This is where the self-* mechanisms come into play and can be tested separately.