Towards specification, modelling and analysis of fault tolerance in self managed systems

In this paper we describe initial ideas about modeling and analyzing fault tolerance mechanisms in self managed/self healing systems. Specifications are component based, with coordination mechanisms for building systems from components. A modal action logic is augmented with deontic operators to describe normal vs abnormal behaviours. Fault tolerance mechanisms can be specified in terms of the kind of abnormality encountered and the desired recovery route. Abstract programming models can be systematically constructed from the specifications in LTSA, a finite state, process algebra based modeling tool. LTSA then enables us to check that various properties do or do not hold for the specified fault tolerance mechanisms.