| Summary: | The administration of distributed systems is an important practical problem. One of the
significant parts of the problem is the management of software configurations. The size and
complexity of distributed systems have made automation of software management tasks
essential. The time has come to determine how to design systems with intrinsic features that
enable general management.
Experience with general approaches to software management is needed. This thesis
presents a model that revolves around structured, declarative specifications of correct con
figurations. It is possible to use declarative specifications to automatically check the cor
rectness of a system and also to automatically fix various problems. The model relies on an
abstract view of systems as collections of objects with particular attribute values.
A new language is introduced for expressing configuration descriptions abstractly. Sim
ple processing algorithms are given for automatically comparing a system with a descrip
tion, and automatically eliminating discrepancies. A prototype implementation is described,
and various related issues are explored.
The proposed model and language are suitable for practical use, as is demonstrated by
an experiment involving a production system. While further work is needed in a variety of
areas, the feasibility of using declarative specifications according to a general, abstract
model has been established. This approach is not of merely theoretical interest. It can be
applied to common systems in routine use today.
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