Cloud-native applications have significantly advanced the development and scalability of online services through the use of microservices and modular architectures. However, achieving adaptability, resilience, and efficient performance management within cloud environments remains a key challenge. This work systematically reviews 111 publications from the last eight years on self-adaptive cloud design and operations patterns, classifying them by objectives, control scope, decision-making approach, automation level, and validation methods. Our analysis reveals that performance optimization dominates research goals, followed by cost reduction and security enhancement, with availability and reliability underexplored. Reactive feedback loops prevail, while proactive approaches-often leveraging machine learning-are increasingly applied to predictive resource provisioning and application management. Resource-oriented adaptation strategies are common, but direct application-level reconfiguration remains scarce, representing a promising research gap. We further catalog tools, platforms, and more than 30 publicly accessible datasets used in validation, and that dataset usage is fragmented without a de facto standard. Finally, we map the research findings on a generic application and system-level design for self-adaptive applications, including a proposal for a federated learning approach for SaaS application Agents. This blueprint aims to guide future work toward more intelligent, context-aware cloud automation.

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