Abstract-ReflectiveMW.fm, 10/2/00, to be submitted to “Middleware Workshop on Reflective Middleware” On The Construction of Reflective System Architectures

Abstract: According to [Blair98] a “reflective System ” is one, that is able “to inspect and to adapt its own internal behaviour”. This, however is in accordance with controlled, or more precisely with feedback systems. Feedback systems are superpositioned systems consisting of a controlled and of a controlling part. Whereas the controlling part inspects continuously the controlled part and generates advises of how the controlled part must be adapted in order to achieve a given targeted behaviour. Feedback and thus reflection are to be understood as recursive cause-and-effect behaviour. This raises questions of system stability and system sensitivity that must be answered for the construction of reflective system architectures. The self-reflection capability of feedback systems do also exist in autonomous systems. Whereas the autonomous systems require reflective capabilities to perform autonomously a certain task in e.g. a poisoned environment which is not observable by humans, the reflective systems need the adaptation capabilities to provide with e.g. a guaranteed qualities of services or to eliminate disturbances during operation