The Software Dock A Distributed Agent based Software Deployment System

Few tools exist to address the post development activities of con guring releasing in stalling updating recon guring and even de installing a software system Certainly there is no uni ed approach for all of these activities and none that can take full advantage of a wide area network The Software Dock represents an architecture for supporting post development activities in such a setting It is designed as a system of loosely coupled cooperating distributed components that are bound together by a wide area messaging and event system The components include eld docks for maintaining site speci c con guration information by consumers release docks for managing the con guration and release of software systems by producers and a variety of agents for automating the activities Its mechanisms of consistent access to a site s con guration information and resources standardized methods for making software releases available and visible and a global event system give software producers and consumers new lever age in managing complex software systems In this paper we describe the Software Dock architecture and discuss the use of a prototype implementation of that architecture in deploying a complex system