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Concepts in Configuration Management Systems


Title: Concepts in Configuration Management Systems

Author(s): Susan Dart

Abstract: There has been considerable progress concerning support for software configuration management (CM) in environments and tools. This paper's intent is to highlight the user concepts provided by existing CM systems. These are shown as a spectrum. In the spectrum, concepts are seen as extensions to, or generalizations of, other concepts. There is difficulty associated with extracting concepts from CM systems since there is no commonality in terminology concerning CM functionality throughout the software engineering community and many CM systems implement variations on concepts. As a result, each concept presented is described as it exists in one particular CM system. A part of highlighting the concepts involves discussing the scope of issues important to users of CM systems. No single CM system provides all the functionality required by the different kinds of users of CM systems. Rather, each CM system addresses some part of the spectrum of concepts. To complete the report, the CM capabilities of the systems used as examples are briefly described.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
    • Definition of Configuration Management
    • The Definition of a CM System
    • A Typical CM User Scenario
    • Organization of This Paper
  • Issues for Users of CM Systems
    • User Roles
    • Integration of a CM System
    • When to Start Using a CM System
    • Levels of CM Control
    • Distinguishing Between Process and Product
    • Amount of CM Automation
    • CM System Functionality
  • Spectrum of Concepts in CM Systems
    • Caveats
    • Component Concepts
      • Repository
      • Distributed Component
    • Process Concepts
      • Context Management
      • Contract
      • Change Request
      • Lifecycle Model
    • Structure and Construction Concepts
      • Change Set
      • System Modelling
      • Subsystem
      • Object Pool
      • Attribution
      • Consistency Maintenance
    • Team Concepts
      • Workspace
      • Transparent View
      • Transaction
    • Summary and Analysis of the Spectrum
  • The Future of CM Systems
  • Conclusions

  • Appendix: Overview of CM Systems
    • Adele
    • Aide-De-Camp (ADC)
    • Change and Configuration Control (CCC)
    • Configuration Management Assistant (CMA)
    • Design Management System (DMS)
    • Domain Software Engineering Environment (DSEE)
    • ISTAR
    • Jasmine
    • LIFESPAN
    • Network Software Environment (NSE)
    • PowerFrame
    • Rational
    • Revision Control System (RCS)
    • shape
    • Software Management System (SMS)
Postscript Acrobat scm home
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University.

Copyright 2007 by Carnegie Mellon University
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URL: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/legacy/scm/abstracts/abscm_concepts.html
Last Modified: 11 January 2007