2.2 Management requirements: A Top-down Approach

 In this step, the ``frames'' of GAMOCs have to be filled with detailed management information, i.e. with attributes, notifications, actions etc. This information has to address different requirements that arise, for example, from software management and distribution on the one hand and from the need to monitor the status of processes and their ability to communicate with other processes etc. on the other hand. To cope with the former problem area, we need information about other applications (including their respective versions) that are installed and how they have to be configured. Additionally, we have to know some general characteristics of the underlying platform, e.g. the release number of the operating system, available disk space etc. In the latter case, required information includes e.g. the status of processes, the end systems they should run on, the status of connections etc. To define this information, we therefore have to use a top-down approach that analyses requirements according to the management functional areas (see e.g. (Kätker, 1996)). They stem from a functional decomposition of the whole complex of management activities, i.e. address the question ``What information about resources do we need for management purposes?''. We have to choose the appropriate GAMOCs representing these resources and map the required information (attributes etc.) to them. Let us have a short look at two examples:

1.

Requirements imposed by software distribution and installation can be met by adding appropriate information to GAMOCs related to the computational viewpoint, especially to the different classes of interfaces and binding objects. These can be instrumented to provide information on other software (i.e., interfaces) required by the application.

2.

Information on the status of processes and of connections that is obviously necessary for fault management can be mapped to the GAMOCs capsule or channel, binder, stub, respectively.