Analyzing Configurations of Deployable Software Systems

Configuring and deploying a large software system is complicated when the system is composed of components and when there are numerous possible configurations for the system. In such a scenario, it is difficult for end-users to specify and install an appropriate configuration for their specific environment. Defining all valid configurations of a software system is challenging, and can be addressed through a concise specification that can generate all of the possible configurations. The Deployable Software Description (DSD), part of the Software Dock project, is one such specification format. But using the DSD runs the risk that the set of generated configurations includes some that are invalid with respect to constraints defined independently of the DSD. This paper describes a framework to support the analysis of DSD specifications to help developers detect potentially invalid configurations. This analysis assumes that the system components are annotated with properties and that an analysis tool is provided which takes a specific configuration and analyzes it for conflicts with respect to some set of constraints. Using the DSD, we can enumerate and analyze configurations to verify their validity. The results can be used to modify the DSD to avoid generating invalid configurations. This material is based upon work sponsored by the Air Force Materiel Command, Rome Laboratory, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency under Contract Numbers F30602-94-C-0253 and F3060298-2-0163. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the Government and no official endorsement should be inferred.