Timed-SAS: Modeling and Analyzing the Time Behaviors of Self-Adaptive Software under Uncertainty

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper could be improved, she since it has  a great topic and problem.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions. The manuscript has been revised using the “Track Changes” function, and the point-by-point responses are listed in the attachment.

Kind regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is well-written and interesting. However, the authors should improve completeness and clarity before publication. 

- I was wondering if there are references to support the following statement: "Secondly, there is a lack of time metrics to systematically evaluate 56 the performance and the time properties of the self-adaptation loops. ". If there exists a reference, please, include the citation.

- Please clarify the difference between the terms analyze and verify in the context of the proposed approach.

- Please standardize the definitions of acronyms. For instance, ship supplying information system (SUIS).

- The elements of Figure 1 should be explained after the citation of the figure. This can improve clarity and readability.

- The example of self-adaptation is interesting. However, could the authors present one more example? It would help readers to understand the context better.

- Please define the acronym VMs.

- Please explain what M means.

- Architecture of SUIS --> Architectural view of SUIS

- Please provide a suitable citation to support the following sentence: "The Network of Priced Timed Automata (NPTA) model is consisted of a set of correlated PTAs that communicate with each other using 123 shared variables or broadcast channels. "

- Please adjust the formatting related to the enumeration on Page 4, from line 138. The authors should include an introductory text before the topics. For instance, The following steps compose the approach:

- Some terms or definitions should be clear. For instance, the Analyze process should the explained (background). The same is valid for similar terms or definitions (e.g., Monitor process). They are mentioned but not properly explained. Is it part of the MAPE-K? If so, should the reader know the specifics of the MAPE-K to understand your approach?

- In Line 178, M_{Period} (subscript)?

- Please adjust the formatting related to the enumeration on Page 5, from line 178. The authors should include an introductory text before the topics.

- In Section 4, the authors could present more detailed explanations and examples of the usage of the approach in the context of the SUIS. The authors could present specific values and explain them in more detail (possible relations with other definitions could be explained in the following sections). This is also valid for the following usage of such an example.

- In Line 192, A_{Delay} (subscript)?

- Figure4 --> Figure 4

- In Section 4, I recommend presenting more concrete explanations (examples) related to the SUIS scenario.

- listing 1 --> Listing 1

- The authors could provide a public repository with all the artifacts (e.g., the model templates and instantiated models).

- Figure8 --> Figure 8

- The title of Section 5.3 could be modified to differentiate it more clearly from Section 6.

- Although the articles do not address the same topics, the authors could cite the following study (which presents a similar methodology for the experiment with formal models): https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/12/3/1475.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,   

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions.  The manuscript has been revised using the “Track Changes” function, and the responses are listed in the attachment.   

Kind regards,   

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Nice content and way of presentation.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,   

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions.  The manuscript has been revised using the “Track Changes” function, and the responses are listed in the attachment.   

Kind regards,   

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

In this paper, the authors proposed the time behavior model for SAS. The issues discussed in this paper can be appreciated. However, the proposed work done in the paper does not create enough contribution in terms of novelty, technical and scientific merits. It is not clear how the model is extended from the existing works. The paper does not clearly discuss whether there is any fundamental improvement/difference between the proposed approach with related works; in other words, how challenging it would be to derive the Timed-SAS. The paper missed discussing the system architecture framework to highlight the main contribution. The discussion on the implementation of TImed-SAS was very shallow. 

How the proposed work can add new knowledge to existing knowledge and be better off from the existing works? The controlled experiment performed is questionable since the experiment was performed to check on the reusability of the template. This does not match with the issues that this paper has discussed earlier. So, it is not clear how the proposed approach solves the mentioned issues. Due to these, the results discussed in the paper are hard to be appreciated.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,   

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions.  The manuscript has been revised using the “Track Changes” function, and the responses are listed in the attachment.   

Kind regards,   

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors improved the reporting in the current version of the article. However, some issues could be further improved. For instance:

- In the caption of Figure 1, is it really necessary to define the SUIS acronym again?

- Some acronyms are defined more than once. For instance, NPTA.

- The titles of Section 5.2 is the same as 5.2.2.

- Please state/discuss the experiment's limitations with the 20 subjects. Besides, a deeper discussion could be provided. For instance, the performance of subjects during modeling and analysis (there is a brief discussion in the current version). 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,   

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions.  The manuscript has been revised using the “Track Changes” function, and the responses are listed in the attachment.   

Kind regards,   

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have addressed all the concerns in the previous review.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable reviews.

Kind regards,

The authors.