Technical and Methodological Knowledge. After successfully participating in this course students can describe:

• an software engineering approach which supports configuration management (in particular: time points of variability, types of variability)
• systematic approaches for configuration management (in particular: configuration specification languages), examples for configuration management tools
• typical sources of misconfiguration and techniques for quality assurance to avoid misconfiguration (in particular: validation, specifications, context, reduction of complexity)

Cognitive and Practical Skills. After successfully participating in this course students can

• use specified variability during program construction,
• use configuration specification languages,
• use techniques of quality assurance in configurable applications.

Social and Personal Skills. After successfully participating in this course students can

• communicate variability with system administrators.

Configuration management is a cross-cutting concern which is important during the whole life cycle of software. In the lecture we discuss:

• configuration file formats, command-line arguments, environment variables
• design and architecture of configuration and configuration access
• reduction of misconfiguration and configuration duplicates
• desirable properties of configuration: self-description, changeability, idempotence, round-tripping
• configuration as user interface
• influence of variability on software architecture
• complexity reduction and testability of configurable applications
• early detection of misconfiguration
• context-awareness, avoidance of dependences
• cascading configuration
• strategies for validation and modularization
• documentation of configuration

Teaching methods

• 1 lecture per week
• 1 homework
• 1 team exercise
• 1 presentation
• depending on the number of participants: either an oral or written exam

The lecture will take place every Friday 14h c.t.-16h in the library of the complang group. The preliminary talk will be in the first lecture on 2.3.2018 at 14h ct.

ECTS-Breakdown

• 0.5 ECTS for visiting lectures (12.5h working time)
• 1,0 ECTS homework (25h working time, partly within lecture)
• 1,0 ECTS team exercise and presentation (25h working time, partly within lecture)
• 0,5 ECTS preparation and participation in oral or written exam (12.5h working time)

The grade is calculated by the individual assessments with the following balance:

30%: home work

30%: team exercise

10%: presentation

30%: oral or written exam

Precondition for visiting the oral or written exam is a positive evaluation of all other assessments. A positive grade requires the positive assessment of all parts. Following grades will be issued genügend (4) for more than 50%, befriedigend (3) for more than 62,5%, gut (2) for more than 75% and sehr gut (1) for more than 87,5% of the reached points in the assessments.

If the registration does not work, please write an email with your student number to markus.raab@complang.tuwien.ac.at.

Slides and book (for further reading)

Technical and Methodological Knowledge. Before participating in the course students must be able to describe the following:

• program properties,
• software engineering processes,
• sources of errors in non-configurable programs.

Cognitive and Practical Skills. Before participating in the course students must be able to:

• work with software requirements,
• use interfaces between applications and operating systems.

Social and Personal Skills. Before participating in the course students must be able to present technical content.

Required preceding courses: none