Control theory-based foundations of self-controlling software

Abstract

The authors' control theory based paradigm gives a framework for specifying and designing software that controls itself as it operates. Based on this paradigm, their self controlling software model supports three levels of control: feedback, adaptation, and reconfiguration. We believe this model can lead to software systems with an impressive capability for responding, adapting, and reconfiguring. Of course, self-controllability does not come for free. The application's functionality must be supplemented with some redundancy to implement the mechanisms of self-adaptability: evaluation, model estimation, adaptation, and reconfiguration. However, we can reduce this overhead and improve overall system performance by: evaluating the behavior based on a sample of feedback iterations rather than on every iteration; generating more efficient interfaces between components at runtime; and constructing more efficient component organizations, scheduling algorithms, and evaluation algorithms at runtime.