SELF-ADAPTIVE SOFTWARE

Introductory Seminar for Bachelor Students ("Proseminar")

 

Topic.
Self-adaptive software is smart – it changes its behavior and internal structure automatically and autonomously at runtime, based on its own observations of the execution environment. For example, self-adaptive software automatically adapts to failures of component services, changes in the availability of resources, security attacks, unbalanced workloads, changing user profiles, and moving devices. Self-adaptation is highly relevant for the automated management of web services, autonomous robot control, and ubiquitous computing environments.

Goal.
In the seminar, we aim at understanding current trends and techniques in self-adaptive software. To this end, we'll study and discuss recently published research papers. We are particularly interested in the software engineering technology needed for building self-adaptive software. This includes:

• Architecture of self-adaptive software;
• self-adaptive middleware;
• formal specification of self-adaptive software;
• tools and frameworks for developers;
• prototype implementations.

Intended audience.
The seminar is intended for bachelor students who are interested in a broad range of computer science topics – including software engineering, formal methods, web engineering, machine learning, robotics, and mobile computing.

Organization.
The seminar is organized as a compact seminar ("Blockseminar"). During March and April, students are requested to read their papers and prepare their presentations. The presentations are scheduled for May and will be packaged into a handful of larger sessions, each spanning several presentations and discussions. Tutors are available during the whole period.

Course requirements.
Basic requirements for the seminar include:

• Reading and understanding one primary paper;
• acquiring supplemental material from two or three secondary sources, as needed;
• preparing slides for a technical presentation about the primary paper;
• giving a 30 minute slide presentation;
• answering technical questions after the presentation.

Attending all presentations and actively participating in the discussions is mandatory for passing the course. In addition, students are required to meet with their tutor upon request and show preliminary versions of their work at an early stage. These meetings are meant to provide advice and help students avoid overload towards the end of the course.

The grade will be based on the quality of the slides, the quality of the oral presentation, and the technical understanding of the material, as demonstrated in the presentation and the subsequent discussion. Dropping the seminar after the papers have been assigned will result in a failed course ("F" or "5.0"). Writing a term paper ("Ausarbeitung") is not required.

Preliminary meeting.
The preliminary meeting ("Vorbesprechung") will take place at the end of February, presumably on Tuesday, February 23 (details to be announced). If you want to register for the seminar, please use the LSF system. In addition, please send an email to:

padberg@cs.uni-saarland.de
Please include your name, student id ("Matrikelnummer"), and semester of study.

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Dr. Frank Padberg, January 31, 2010