Towards run-time adaptation of test cases for self-adaptive systems in the face of uncertainty

Abstract

Self-adaptive systems (SAS) may be subjected to conditions for which they were not explicitly designed. For those high-assurance SAS applications that must deliver critical services, techniques are needed to ensure that only acceptable behavior is provided. While testing an SAS at design time can validate its expected behaviors in known circumstances, testing at run time provides assurance that the SAS will continue to behave as expected in uncertain situations. This paper introduces Veritas, an approach for using utility functions to guide the test adaptation process as part of a run-time testing framework. Specifically, Veritas adapts test cases for an SAS at run time to ensure that the SAS continues to execute in a safe and correct manner when adapting to handle changing environmental conditions.