Enterprise Application Deployment: A model driven approach

Abstract

Today’s enterprise applications are based on numerous interrelated com- ponents that capture domain-specific, generic or infrastructural functionality. Each component is based on several constituting artifacts where a certain artifact is also needed by different components. The dependencies between components and artifacts become even more complex when versioning is required. Additionally, a software development process requires several runtime environments for development, testing, consolidation and production for which elements of artifacts need to be configured accordingly. For managing the deployment of enterprise applications throughout an application’s life cycle, a number of commercial tools are available. However, such tools often focus on specific technologies and require an integrated approach for build and deployment management. In this paper we present a different approach that allows for an agile model-driven deployment process that can be adapted to the desired level of detail. We propose the use of models to capture the complexity of interrelations between components, artifacts and their versions. By using either standard languages such as UML or domain-specific languages for the definition of system models, suitable tooling will be used to provide graphical user interfaces allowing for specifying required model elements and attributes.