Dissertaç ˜ao de Mestrado Mestrado em Engenharia Informática Jo ...

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An application reconfiguration
framework
Chapter 1 identified the problem of automatic application configuration, along with the con-
cept of pattern in a configuration file, whereas Chapter 2 studied the existing tools and tech-
nologies that can help to mitigate the problem. Using that knowledge, this chapter presents the
framework for automatic application configuration, the major contribution of this dissertation.
In truth, the proposed framework reconfigures applications (possibly fresh installations or
deployments of an application) instead of configuring them at deployment time, but for the
sake of clarity, the problem will be addressed in the remainder of the dissertation as the auto-
matic configuration of applications. The proposed framework requires three steps to config-
ure an application automatically: conversion from original to generic syntax, file modification
and conversion back to original syntax. Only the first and third belong to the scope of this
work. The configuration resorts to the lexical and syntatic analysis of the configuration file and
subsequent production of a data structure which is equivalent to the original file. After the
data-structure is properly modified, it is reconverted back to the original file form.
We start by identifying the functional and non-functional requirements of the tool in Sec-
tion 3.1, Section 3.2 provides a broad view over the solution proposal, Sections 3.3 and 3.4 detail
the required components in each step and their interfaces, Section 3.5 approaches the file mod-
ification part by proposing some ways to modify the intermediate file in generic syntax and
providing some information about the generic syntax and Section 3.6 deals with the support
for file formats not recognizable by the framework.
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