Information systems can be complex due to numerous factors including scale, decentralization, heterogeneity, mobility, dynamism, bugs and failures. Depl- ing, operating and maintaining such systems can be not only very di?cult, but also very costly. A ?urry of recent activity has been directed at this pr- lem, and future information systems are envisioned as self-con?guring, se- organizing,self-managingandself-repairing.Collectively,wecalltheseproperties self- properties. This book is a spin-o? of a by-invitation-only Bertinoro workshop on se- propertiesincomplexsystemswhichwasheldinsummer2004inBertinoro,Italy. The Self-star workshop brought together researchers and practitioners from d- ferent disciplines and with di?erent backgrounds to discuss complex information systems.Thethemeoftheworkshopwastoidentifytheconceptualandpractical foundationsformodeling,analyzingandachievingself- propertiesindistributed and networked systems. Partly based on these discussions, we solicited papers from the workshop participants and a set of invitees for this book. We sought original contributions in which authors explicitly take a position concerningrequirements,usefulness,potentialandlimitations oftechnologies for self- properties of complex systems. This position needed to be founded on - search results that were put clearly in context with respect to the position sta- ment. We strongly encouraged visionary statements, thought-provoking ideas, and exploratory results that will help the reader form her or his own opinions on the importance of self- properties in current and future complex information systems.

Inhalt
The Self-Star Vision.- The Self-Star Vision.- Self-organization.- Evolving Fractal Gene Regulatory Networks for Graceful Degradation of Software.- Evolutionary Computing and Autonomic Computing: Shared Problems, Shared Solutions?.- Self-? Topology Control in Wireless Multihop Ad Hoc Communication Networks.- Emergent Consensus in Decentralised Systems Using Collaborative Reinforcement Learning.- The Biologically Inspired Distributed File System: An Emergent Thinker Instantiation.- Evolutionary Games: An Algorithmic View.- Self-awareness.- Model Based Diagnosis and Contexts in Self Adaptive Software.- On the Use of Online Analytic Performance Models, in Self-Managing and Self-Organizing Computer Systems.- Prediction-Based Software Availability Enhancement.- Making Self-Adaptation an Engineering Reality.- An Online Control Framework for Designing Self-Optimizing Computing Systems: Application to Power Management.- Self-Management of Systems Through Automatic Restart.- Fundamentals of Dynamic Decentralized Optimization in Autonomic Computing Systems.- Self-awareness vs. Self-organization.- The Conflict Between Self- Capabilities and Predictability.- Self-Aware Software Will It Become a Reality?.- Supporting Self-.- A Case for Design Methodology Research in Self- Distributed Systems.- Enabling Autonomic Grid Applications: Requirements, Models and Infrastructure.- Pandora: An Efficient Platform for the Construction of Autonomic Applications.- Spatial Computing: The TOTA Approach.- Towards Self-Managing QoS-Enabled Peer-to-Peer Systems.- Peer-to-Peer Algorithms.- Cooperative Content Distribution: Scalability Through Self-Organization.- Design and Analysis of a Bio-inspired Search Algorithm for Peer to Peer Networks.- Multifaceted Simultaneous Load Balancing in DHT-Based P2P Systems: A New Game with Old Balls and Bins.- Robust Locality-Aware Lookup Networks.- Power-Aware Distributed Protocol for a Connectivity Problem in Wireless Sensor Networks.- Self-Management of Virtual Paths in Dynamic Networks.- Sociologically Inspired Approaches for Self-: Examples and Prospects.