An Extended Description of MORPH: A Reference Architecture for Configuration and Behaviour Self-Adaptation

An architectural approach to self-adaptive systems involves runtime change of system configuration (i.e., the system’s components, their bindings and operational parameters) and behaviour update (i.e., component orchestration). The architecture should allow for both configuration and behaviour changes selected from pre-computed change strategies and for synthesised change strategies at run-time to satisfy changes in the environment, changes in the specified goals of the system or in response to failures or degradation in quality attributes, such as performance, of the system itself. Although controlling configuration and behaviour at runtime has been discussed and applied to architectural adaptation, architectures for self-adaptive systems often compound these two aspects reducing the potential for adaptability. In this work we provide an extended description of our proposal for a reference architecture that allows for coordinated yet transparent and independent adaptation of system configuration and behaviour.