This panel paper sets out to discuss what self-adaptation
means, and to explore the extent to which current
autonomic systems exhibit truly self-adaptive behaviour.
Many of the currently cited examples are clearly
adaptive, but debate remains as to what extent they are
simply following prescribed adaptation rules within preset
bounds, and to what extent they have the ability to
truly learn new behaviour. Is there a standard test that
can be applied to differentiate? Is adaptive behaviour
sufficient anyway? Other autonomic computing issues are
also discussed