What is adaptive programming?

An adaptive program is one that changes its behavior base on the current state of its environment. This notion of adaptivity is formalized, and a logic for reasoning about adaptive programs is presented. The logic includes several composition operators that can be used to define an adaptive program in terms of given constituent programs; programs resulting from these compositions retain the adaptive properties of their constituent programs. The authors begin by discussing adaptive sequential programs, then extend the discussion to adaptive distributed programs. The relationship between adaptivity and self-stabilization is discussed. A case study for constructing an adaptive distributed program where a token is circulated in a ring of processes is presented.