Table Of ContentLecture Notes in Computer Science 1675
Editedby G.Goos,J. Hartmanisand J.van Leeuwen
3
Berlin
Heidelberg
NewYork
Barcelona
HongKong
London
Milan
Paris
Singapore
Tokyo
Jacky Estublier (Ed.)
System Configuration
Management
9th International Symposium, SCM-9
Toulouse, France, September 5-7, 1999
Proceedings
1 3
SeriesEditors
GerhardGoos,KarlsruheUniversity,Germany
JurisHartmanis,CornellUniversity,NY,USA
JanvanLeeuwen,UtrechtUniversity,TheNetherlands
VolumeEditor
JackyEstublier
LaboratoireDasaultSyste`mes/LSR
Actimart,2,Alle´edeRoumanie,36610Gieres,France
E-mail:[email protected]
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Systemconfigurationmanagement:9thinternationalsymposium/SCM-9,Toulouse,
France,September5-7,1999.JackyEstublier(ed.).-Berlin;Heidelberg;
NewYork;Barcelona;HongKong;London;Milan;Paris;Singapore;Tokyo:
Springer,1999
(Lecturenotesincomputerscience;Vol.1675)
ISBN3-540-66484-X
CRSubjectClassification(1998):D.2,K.6,K.4.3
ISSN0302-9743
ISBN3-540-66484-X Springer-VerlagBerlinHeidelbergNewYork
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Preface
This workshop series is now over ten years old, which is a pretty long time for a very
focussed topic: Configuration Management. The first conference took place in 1988
(Grassau, Germany) and the topics were focussed on version control and rebuilding.
Many people consider that SCM is one of the few areas of software engineering that
can be considered to be really successful. Products, that more or less fulfill their pur-
pose, exist, and everybody agrees that they are now mandatory for a successful soft-
ware project.
Indeed, during the second half of the nineties, SCM has entered a maturation phase, in
which good commercial products have been incorporating many of the features de-
signed and discussed at previous conferences of this workshop. With the generaliza-
tion of commercial products, the question now is: What are the objectives of a scien-
tific workshop on this topic? Is there any more research to be done in SCM today?
This ninth volume in the series reflects pretty well the current state and mood in the
CM community. There are an unprecedented number of papers discussing the current
state of the art and trying to identify research directions (session 6). On some core
topics, like versioning (session 3), and following SCM8 tracks, papers present work
on unified models. Versioning models, after years of raging discussions, now seem to
have found a consensus.
Nevertheless, SCM is facing new challenges, and new solutions are required to man-
age systems consisting of tightly integrated hardware and software, dynamic systems
that change at run-time, or non-traditional artifacts such as Web sites. Moreover, new
solutions are required to deploy complex systems within large organizations, to sup-
port development teams from multiple disciplines, located in different settings, and
constrained by important quality and time objectives.
The following papers do not propose new solutions to all these issues (session 5), but
at least make an effort to identify the new needs and challenges of SCM in such a
context (sessions 1 & 3). We believe there are still many aspects to be addressed and
enhancements to be made in the area of System Configuration Management.
June 1999 Jacky Estublier
General Chair
CONTENTS
1. WEB AND DISTRIBUTION
Chair: Ian Sommerville
Content Change Management: Problems for Web Systems 1
S. Dart
Experiences: Distributed Development and Software Configuration Management 17
U. Asklund, B. Magnusson, A. Persson
Applying Software Configuration Management in Web Sites 34
Development: A Case Study
M. Leoni, M. Trainotti, A. Valerio
2. EXPERIENCE AND TOOLS
Chair: Reidar Conradi
Software Configuration Management Risk Analysis before Relocating the Porting 38
of Product(cid:146)s Family
!
M. Simonic, J.Gy(cid:246)rk(cid:246)s, I. Rozman
Why Do Some Mature Organizations Not Use Mature CM Tools? 50
I. Crnkovic
An Experience in Configuration Management in SODALIA 66
M. Banzi, , F. Macugli, S. Borion, G. La Commare,
3. VERSIONING AND MODELS
Chair: AndrØ van der Hoek
A Branching/Merging Strategy for Parallel Software Development 86
J. Buffenbarger, K. Gruell
The Unified Extensional Versioning Model 100
U. Asklund, L. Bendix, H.B. Christensen, B. Magnusson
4. WEB AND DISTRIBUTION
Chair: Susan Dart
Deployment Descriptions in a World of COTS and Open Source 123
W.J. Hansen
VTML for Fine-Grained Change Tracking in Editing Structured Documents 139
L. Bendix, F. Vitaly
Global Names: Support for Managing Software in a World of Virtual 157
Organizations
M.L. Van De Vanter, T. Murer
VIII Table of Contents
5. NEW DEVELOPMENTS
Chair: Geoff Clemm
Distributed Objects for Concurrent Engineering 172
J. Estublier
Goals for a Configuration Management Network Protocol 186
J. Whitehead, Jr.
CM Strategies for RAD 204
D. W. Weber
6. RESEARCH STATUS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Chair: Boris Magnusson
Software Configuration Management: State of the Art, State of the Practice 217
K. Fr(cid:252)hauf, A. Zeller
SCM: Status and Future Challenges 228
R. Conradi, B. Westfechtel
New Challenges for Configuration Management 232
M. Larsson, I. Crnkovic
TUTORIAL
Chair: Annita Persson
The Three SCM Implementation Levels 244
M.E. Moreira
AUTHOR INDEX 255
Content Change Management:
Problems for Web Systems
Susan Dart
Dart Technology Strategies, Inc., 1280 Bison St, PMB-510,
Newport Beach, CA. 92660. USA
[email protected]
www.susandart.com
Abstract. Behind the facade of a web site, lies the task of managing its
infrastructure and content. This is driving the Internet economy into a Web
crisis. The software community has experienced a similar crisis and knows
that configuration management (CM) is a key player in resolving it. Nine
challenges facing web systems are presented. As the entire world becomes
“webified”, content problems will be magnified. While traditional software
CM provides a static solution (such as via a centralized development
methodology creating batched, planned releases), content CM will provide a
dynamic solution (via distributed, real-time updates) in response to user
traffic monitoring. It is imperative that the lessons learned from CM be
applied to web tools. Otherwise, the Web community is doomed to
experience all the delivery, quality and complexity problems that have
plagued the software community.
1 Introduction
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a unifying force bringing the world closer to
together: Regardless of race, color, creed, skills, educational background, computer
platform, browser, nature of business, geographical location, and job position, we
all (cid:147)look(cid:148) the same. Business is being transformed into E-commerce. Such revenue
is expected to hit $220billion by 2001 (says International Data Corp.1999). Behind
the facade of e-commerce though, the Web Crisis is looming (1). That crisis is the
exponential proliferation of web content that was created, and is maintained,
without any expertise in data management techniques (cid:150) the proliferation of (cid:147)hacked
together(cid:148) web-based systems developed without any rigorous approach and kept
running via a continual stream of patches. Companies are desperate to (cid:147)webify(cid:148)
their business applications. The Internet (cid:147)gold rush fever(cid:148) is encouraging business
start-ups centralized around the WWW. With the advent of many, low-cost
publishing tools that are very easy to use, web system creation is now so simple that
anyone without programming skills can create one.
The demand for content creation and maintenance is escalating at an unmanageable
rate. Some analysts (Merrill Lynch Co. 1999) have predicted that by the year 2002,
the market revenue from content management tools will be around $5billion. And, even
when we have it under control, content has a multiplier effect, a snowball effect, where
we will further exploit new ways of using content. First generation web systems
have focused on providing access to any piece of information around the world. The
J. Estublier (Ed.): SCM-9, LNCS 1675, pp. 1-16, 1999.
' Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1999
2 Susan Dart
next generation web systems will focus on knowledge management: -- managing
the semantics of, or concepts of, content, rather than just the raw information.
For now though, we see the shortcomings of first generation web systems. There
are problems with information being published on the web site at the wrong time
and information that is inaccurate, top secret, corrupt, inconsistent, unauthorized,
unchecked, garbage, stale, or inappropriate. These can have devastating
consequences for companies such as millions of dollars lost in revenue, lost
customers, and lowered stock prices (such as with software crash (13).) The causes
are easily linked back to lack of: well-defined processes, testing, cross-checking of
information, authorized changes, security checking, or responsibility for co-ordinated
changes. Essentially, the problems stem from poor configuration management (CM)
practices. The first generation of web systems were crafted from immature tools and
languages, and inexperienced staff. To properly provide Change Content Management
(CCM) -- CM for web systems -- we will have to go beyond the capabilities
traditionally provided by industrial-strength software CM tools because the
challenges presented by the emerging web economy are exceptional.
This paper is designed to raise questions about CCM for web so that we can
understand the new demands placed on companies by web systems. A web system
is a generic term for an application that can be accessed via the WWW. It
fundamentally consists of content (its data, such as a document), application server
(for executing actions on the data, such as updating document), access (its interface,
such as the client(cid:146)s browser) and the web server (supporting the applications;
common ones include Apache, Internet Information Server and Enterprise Server).
The biggest challenge for the WWW community is how to build maintainable
web systems that are highly responsive to immediate, high-volume change.
This paper defines the kinds of resources in the WWW environment that are used in
web systems, specifies the classes of web systems being developed, identifies the
many challenges that companies are facing in their efforts to understand CCM,
highlights capabilities provided by software CM and web CCM tools and ends with
recommendations for approaching the solutions.
2 The World Wide Web Environment
Web systems can be huge, with millions of pages, many interconnections and with
incredibly high hit rates. Consider Figure 1 which highlights the many kinds of
resources throughout the WWW that can be a component of a web system. Figure 1
shows that users can be connected to the network via a thin client or a fat client.
A thin client means application code is resident on the server, rather than on the
client (fat client). A firewall determines the kind of access, encryption and security
levels. Web servers provide much of the application code and can have
accelerators for caching dynamic pages in order to improve user access time. The
network can be specialized into an Intranet, Extranet or Virtual Private Network
