A database model for effective configuration management in the programming environment

摘要

The effective management of configurations by programmers requires automatic techniques which are operative in the program development environment. In this paper, an abstract model is developed to cover the significant aspects of a typical programming environment pertinent to configuration management, using a database to capture configuration knowledge. The two aspects of the model deal with configuration identification and configuration control. In considering configuration identification, it is shown that the tools in the programming environment determine which configuration items need to be identified and also determine what the interesting and useful relations are among those items. In considering configuration control, the notion of a workspace, consisting of certain modification rights and certain visibility into the database, is developed to prevent conflict and to promote cooperation among programmers. The entire model can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of configuration management within a particular programming environment or as the basis of a programming environment design.