Self-* properties in smart environments: Requirements and performance metrics

Self-management in smart environments increases dependability of applications, thereby decreasing maintenance costs thanks to the reduced need for user and expert intervention. We define what we call the self-* properties of a self-managing system, namely, self-healing, self-protection, self-awareness, self-organizing, self-synchronization and self-configuration, as well as a generic self-* process enabling these properties. We focus on the self-healing property and a scenario in this context, where the states of a smart environment application in a self-healing process as well as functional and non-functional system requirements are identified. Finally, we present metrics, allowing a quantitative evaluation of the proposed self-healing process