Visualising Configurations of Dynamically Composed Systems

Traditional configuration management systems assume that it is possible to statically define the nature of a system configuration and then to use this definition as the basis of a discrete build step in the software development process. One class of systems for which this is not possible is one where the system configuration is determined dynamically, while the system is in operation. Furthermore, this class of systems is of increasing importance with the increasing relevance of distributed systems, dynamic composition mechanisms such as Java’s class loader, and related ideas. When considering configurations of dynamically composed systems, both from the point of view of understanding them and for the purposes of manipulating them, quite different tool support is required from that provided for statically composed systems. For example, it is difficult to understand what components comprise the configuration of a dynamically composed system at a given moment in time, and what other components might meaningfully replace these components. This paper illustrates the role that visualisation can play in this area, by describing an approach to designing views for configurations of dynamically composed systems.