Ultra-large-scale (uls) Systems: Socio- Adaptive Systems

ion: 1. A process of eliminating, hiding, or ignoring characteristics or aspects of a concept unrelated to a given purpose. 2. A concept or system construct that has been subjected to a process of abstraction. acceptability-oriented computing: An approach to the construction of systems in which a designer identifies a set of properties that the execution must satisfy to be acceptable to its users. This is in contrast to the traditional approach, which is to construct a system with as few errors as possible. Acceptabilityoriented computing was defined by Martin Rinard, Professor of Computer Science at MIT, in the paper, “Acceptability Oriented Computing,” presented at the 2003 ObjectOriented Systems, Languages, & Applications Conference (OOPSLA ‘03). agile method or agile methodology: A style of software development characterized by its release schedule, attitude toward change, and patterns of communication. The product is developed in iterations, usually one to four weeks long. At the end of each iteration, the product has additional, fully implemented value and is ready to be deployed. The design horizon usually extends only to the end of the current iteration; little code is written in anticipation of future needs. The project is seen by the programmers as a stream of unanticipated requirements. Written natural-language communication is considered a usually inefficient compromise. Face-to-face communication is higher bandwidth (but transient). Executable documentation—code and tests—is permanent, less ambiguous, and self-checking. Agile projects prefer a combination of the latter two over the first. aleatoric: Pertaining to luck, chance, or randomness. allopoiesis: A process whereby an organization or network of components produces something other than itself; literally, other-production. An example of allopoiesis is an assembly line. annealing: Any process for increasing the order of a system by first increasing its susceptibility to disorder and then steadily decreasing such susceptibility in the presence of mechanisms or phenomena that tend to create or capture order. ant-colony optimization: A technique for solving problems that can be reduced to finding short paths in a graph by using a process similar to how an ant colony finds paths to food. In this process, individuals randomly wander the graph, leaving behind a trail that dissipates over time. When a good path is found, the individual returns along the left trail, reinforcing it. Other individuals who find this path are likely to follow it, further reinforcing it. Because trails dissipate over time, longer trails will be less likely to be reinforced than shorter ones. aspect-oriented programming: A programming paradigm that attempts to aid programmers in the separation of concerns (breaking down a program into distinct parts that overlap in functionality as little as possible). The hallmark of the paradigm is to represent as modules crosscutting concerns, which are distinct design decisions or functionality that are conceptually distinct but whose implementations are usually dispersed throughout the modules of a system. The idea was first presented in the paper, “Aspect-Oriented Programming,” by Gregor Kiczales, John Lamping, Anurag Mendhekar, Chris Maeda,