Supporting Automatic Configuration of Component-Based Distributed Systems

Recent developments in Component technology enable the construction of complex software systems by assembling together off-the-shelf components. However, it is still difficult to develop efficient, reliable, and dynamically configurable component-based systems. Components are often developed by different groups with different methodologies. Unspecified dependencies and behavior lead to unexpected failures.

Component-based software systems must maintain explicit representations of inter-component dependence and component requirements. This provides a common ground for supporting fault-tolerance and automating dynamic configuration.

In this paper, we present a generic model for reifying dependencies in distributed component systems and discuss how it can be used to support automatic configuration. We describe our experience deploying the framework in a CORBA-compliant reflective ORB and discuss the use of this model in a new distributed operating system.