Implementing configuration management policies for distributed applications

The central purpose of this paper is to present a novel framework supporting the specification and the implementation of configuration management policies for distributed applications. The introduced approach is part of a system called PRISMA (A platform for integrated construction and management of distributed applications). It provides an integrated application development environment comprising of a distributed application model, a specification language and several design, implementation and management tools. To reduce management complexity, we introduce a technique which permits the definition of configuration management policies as an integral part of an application specification. A configuration management policy is composed of one or more instantiation rules and termination rules for component creation and termination, and event-driven reconfiguration rules.