Michael C Cheng

US Patent:

20060123016, Jun 8, 2006

Filed:

Dec 2, 2004

Appl. No.:

11/002696

Inventors:

Rohith Ashok - Apex NC, US
Michael Cheng - Austin TX, US
Vishwanath Venkataramappa - Austin TX, US
Qinhua Wang - Austin TX, US

Assignee:

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION - ARMONK NY

International Classification:

G06F 7/00

US Classification:

707100000

Abstract:

A meta-data driven method and apparatus to manage configurations of coexisting heterogeneous subsystems. The present invention recognizes that schemas evolve incrementally from version to version. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention employs two stages: an identification specification stage, to identify and/or specify any changes in a heterogeneous distributed system, and a configuration validation stage, to implement and/or validate the changes thus identified or specified. In the first stage, the identification specification stage, the present invention programmably compares the next version of the schema from its previous version. This allows meta-data to be created that describes how a schema component evolves from version to version. In addition, a user may specify what appears in the schema. In the second stage, the configuration validation stage, the meta-data created in the first stage can be used to determine whether a particular component version of the subsystem is valid for a particular schema component, and vice versa, and/or to configure the subsystem to conform to the schema.