Software Architecture, Configuration Management, and Configurable Distributed Systems: A Ménage a Trois

Software architecture, configuration management, and configurable distributed systems are three areas of research that until now have evolved separately. Contributions in each field have focused on their respective area of concern. However, as solutions in the three fields tend to center around some notion of a system model, it is worthwhile to investigate their relationship in detail. In particular, the large amount of overlap among the system models developed in each area, combined with the complementary nature of the differences among them, suggests that an approach based on a common system model is viable. In this paper, we illustrate the benefits of using such a unified system model, identify the commonalities and differences among the existing system models, and present some of our initial experiments that we believe will lead to the development of a single system model that is usable in all three fields. This work was supported in part by the Air Force Material Command, Rome Laboratory, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency under Contract Number F30602-94-C-0253. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the Government and no official endorsement should be inferred.