Evolution of Configuration Models – a Focus on Consistency

This paper describes a novel approach that guarantees consistency of structure-based configuration models in an evolution process using a knowledge representation based on description logics. We define the term consistency and discuss different notions of consistency that are domain-dependent or configuration-tool specific. Change operations are introduced as a formal means to capture changes to a configuration model. A set of invariants formally defines what consistency denotes for structure-based configuration and enables an adaptive approach to handle configuration models that rely on different notions of consistency. A model editor implementing this evolution process allows to execute change operations, identifies inconsistency in a configuration model after change execution and suggests repair operations for repairing inconsistent configuration models.