MAPE-K Based Guidelines for Designing Reactive and Proactive Self-adaptive Systems

The rapid evolution of complex software systems claims for novel approaches, such as self-adaptive systems that can autonomously adjust their behavior to meet changing requirements and dynamic contexts. This paper proposes guidelines for the development of reactive and proactive approaches to self-adaptive systems. The guidelines concern architectural based approaches using explicitly the MAPE-K (Monitor, Analyze, Plan, Execute using Knowledge) control feedback loop. The proposed guidelines are organized into five parts, one for each step of the MAPE-K loop including the knowledge with the goal to provide guidance when designing and implementing self-adaptive systems from a software engineering point of view. Three self-adaptive artifacts (i.e., OCCI Monitoring, DingNet, and SWIM) from different application domains (i.e., cloud computing, Internet of Things, Web application) have been analyzed by considering the proposed guidelines. Their reactive and proactive characteristics are compared.