Deployment and configuration of distributed systems

In order to ease the development and handling of complex software systems, component models and distributed object technologies have been developed that allow the decomposition of systems and the use of software components in a distributed processing environment. While modelling and development of components is well supported, the deployment and configuration of component-based distributed systems lacks proper model reflection and is still a time consuming and difficult task. Hence, several approaches for supporting the deployment and configuration of component-based distributed systems at the modelling level have been developed recently and exist in parallel today. In this paper, the main concepts for deployment and configuration of three of those approaches are investigated and compared. It turns out that each of them focuses on different aspects. The approaches considered are ITU-eODL, UML 2.0 and the Deployment and Configuration Specification of the OMG. The ultimate goal is to identify the core concepts in this area in order to facilitate integration with the Unified Language Family of the ITU (ITU-ULF).