Quality Criteria and an Analysis Framework for Self-Healing Systems

Autonomic computing has become more prevalent and hence its evaluation is becoming more important. This paper addresses the issue of evaluating the software architecture of self-healing applications with respect to the changes and adaptation over long periods of time. To facilitate this evaluation, we developed an analysis and reasoning framework for the architecture of self-healing systems. The framework is based on attribute-based architectural styles (ABASs) and is tailored to selected quality attributes. When an autonomic system evolves, our framework can be used to re-analyze the system and verify certain quality attributes. The explicitly available relationship between architecture and quality attributes not only helps in documenting the current architecture design, but also allows developers to reuse the architectural analysis during long-term evolution when the original system designers are long gone. Hence, the proposed framework can facilitate both design and maintenance of self-healing systems. As a first step in the analysis, we identify key quality attributes for self-healing systems. We have also defined new autonomic specific quality attributes for self-healing systems. Further, we have customized the ISO 9126 quality model to the quality requirements of self-healing systems, considering both traditional attributes as well as newly defined autonomic-specific attributes.