Abstract
Autonomic computing is being described as a new paradigm for computing. But in order to become a new paradigm, robust and easy-to-use methodologies and tools have to be developed. In this paper, we take a significant step towards this goal by proposing an agent-based methodology to autonomic computing systems. Starting from the recently realized fact that agent technology has the potential to be integrated into the framework of autonomic computing, we propose to adapt the agent based methodology Gaia for the analysis and the design of autonomic computing systems. Gaia adapted considers system's organization as made up with two subsystems organizations namely a managed system organization and an autonomic manager organization, which stand in certain relationships to one another. The key concepts in Gaia adapted are roles which take two forms namely basic roles and autonomic roles, that can interact with one another in certain institutionalized ways, which are defined in the autonomic interaction model.