Self-improving system integration: Mastering continuous change

• Published in: Future generation computer systems 2021-04, Vol.117, p.29-46
• Main Authors: Bellman, Kirstie, Botev, Jean, Diaconescu, Ada, Esterle, Lukas, Gruhl, Christian, Landauer, Christopher, Lewis, Peter R., Nelson, Phyllis R., Pournaras, Evangelos, Stein, Anthony, Tomforde, Sven
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Autonomous systems; Organic computing; Self-improvement; Self-integration; System engineering; Taxonomy
• ISSN: 0167-739X; 1872-7115
• DOI: 10.1016/j.future.2020.11.019

The research initiative “self-improving system integration” (SISSY) was established with the goal to master the ever-changing demands of system organisation in the presence of autonomous subsystems, evolving architectures, and highly-dynamic open environments. It aims to move integration-related decisions from design-time to run-time, implying a further shift of expertise and responsibility from human engineers to autonomous systems. This introduces a qualitative shift from existing self-adaptive and self-organising systems, moving from self-adaptation based on predefined variation types, towards more open contexts involving novel autonomous subsystems, collaborative behaviours, and emerging goals. In this article, we revisit existing SISSY research efforts and establish a corresponding terminology focusing on how SISSY relates to the broad field of integration sciences. We then investigate SISSY-related research efforts and derive a taxonomy of SISSY technology. This is concluded by establishing a research road-map for developing operational self-improving self-integrating systems. •A clear definition of SISSY systems and Integration Science. We give various examples of systems self-integrating in different application areas. This allows us to clearly position SISSY systems within integration science (which has not been done before).•We perform a thorough review of the literature related directly to SISSY systems. In addition, we explore and analyse literature and related work not published at core venues with relation to SISSY systems. A total of 186 papers and articles have been reviewed for the systematic literature review.•We perform a broad analysis of the research gaps for 5 different aspects of SISSY systems. This furthermore leads into a comprehensive research roadmap in 3 different directions related to SISSY systems. The assessments of research gaps and the concomitant roadmap provides researchers with core research topics and open questions to be answered in order to progress the work towards better SISSY systems.