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Abstract : |
Software applications are no longer stand-alone systems. They are increasingly the result of integrating heterogeneous collections of components, both executable and data, possibly dispersed over a computer network. Di#erent components can be provided by di#erent producers and they can be part of di#erent systems at the same time. Moreover, components can change rapidly and independently, making it di#cult to manage the whole system in a consistent way. Under these circumstances, a crucial step of the software life cycle is deployment---that is, the activities related to the release, installation, activation, deactivation, update, and removal of components, as well as whole systems. This paper presents a framework for characterizing technologies that are intended to support software deployment. The framework highlights four primary factors concerning the technologies: process coverage; process changeability; interprocess coordination; and site, product, and deployment policy abstraction. A variety of existing technologies are surveyed and assessed against the framework. Finally, we discuss promising research directions in software deployment., |
