Towards design for self-healing

ABSTRACT

Self-healing mechanisms are increasingly attracting the interest of both industrial and research communities as a way of increasing reliability of software systems, while overcoming technical and cost limitations of classic analysis and testing techniques.

Many recent studies focus on techniques for enabling self-healing mechanisms independently from software design. These approaches are effective, but often limited by early design decisions. In this position paper, we argue that a disciplined design approach can enable a wide and effective range of self-healing mechanisms, thus overcoming many limitations of the current approaches.

We discuss the differences between design for testability and design for self-healing approaches, and we propose the foundation for a new design for self-healing methodology.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging

General Terms:
Design, Reliability

Keywords:
design for self-healing, self-healing