Verification and analysis of autonomic systems for networked enterprises

Autonomic Computing is an innovative research area, that proposes self-management features for dynamic configuration, healing purpose, optimization and protection. Autonomic systems adapt themselves quickly to changes in the environment in which they operate, but, while this feature helps the automatic management of complex systems, it makes the job of validating and verifying them extremely difficult. In this chapter we point out the major challenges in validating such systems and we overview some proposals and methodologies for supporting their validation, analyzing in particular model checking techniques, testing methodologies, model-based dependability analysis and monitoring. Moreover we propose our model checking approach for verifying the autonomic workflow, developed for ArtDeco project and described in Chapter 7.