System and method for managing enterprise application configuration

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates generally to a system and method for managing the configuration of an application with respect to one or more environments.

2. Related Art

When an organization, such as a large corporation, develops software internally, referred to herein as enterprise software, typically it is deployed onto a server or a set of servers, often between multiple platforms in order to be used in different environments within the corporation. In order for the application to interact with each environment, certain settings or parameters of the application must be modified for each environment. The parameters are maintained in one or more configuration files of the application. The parameters are modified by accessing each relevant configuration file within the application and changing each parameter manually, typically by a system administrator or software programmer. The changes are saved and the application is deployed onto the particular environment.

Currently, two methods are used to modify the configuration files of an application. One method is to modify the configuration files during the “runtime” of the application where the configuration files are accessed and modified each time the application is deployed onto a new environment. The runtime method requires knowledge of the parameters related to each environment and manual generation or modification of the files prior to deployment. The second method is to modify the configuration files during the “build-time” of the application, where the configuration files are modified during the construction phase of the application, prior to deployment. The build-time method requires a user or administrator having to know in advance all of the settings for each environment the application may be deployed onto, and creating a configuration file for each potential environment at the time the software application is created, or built. Both conventional methods require modification of the configuration files at a file level. With multiple environments and multiple versions of an application, there can be a voluminous number of configuration file modifications that must be maintained for an enterprise software application to function seamlessly. Corporations continually deploy new enterprise applications onto their environments and update the applications with new versions. As discussed above, each deployment requires modifying the configuration files of the application manually, making this process easily subject to human error. Thus, managing the configuration files for every application in every environment can be cumbersome and costly.

Commonly, commercial software providers supply proprietary installation programs to support their own commercial applications, which modify the configuration files of the particular application as it installs, or during “run time.” For example, Microsoft supplies an installation program or “wizard” to manage deployment of Excel or Word. However, such installment programs may be used only for that specific version of the commercial software and for a particular environment, limiting the use of the installation program. A one-time deployment is not useful for a software application, such as an enterprise application, which is deployed onto multiple platforms, and which may be modified, or re-versioned, multiple times.

Thus, a need exists for an improved software configuration tool.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

Embodiments of the present invention address this and other needs. The present invention relates to a system and method for managing the configuration files of an enterprise application. The system and method support multiple deployments of an application across multiple environments by dynamically modifying the configuration files of the application in order for the application to interface properly with each environment. More specifically, the present invention provides for management of the configuration files associated with an application by modifying the parameters within the configuration files at an application level as opposed to the conventional methods of managing the configuration files at a file level. The present invention advantageously combines two conventional methods, modification at run time, and modification at build time, by presenting a system and method to construct and/or modify the configuration files of an application during the compilation of the application, just prior to deployment onto a specific environment.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, a system for managing application configuration files includes a configuration file tool and a database containing a plurality of configuration file parameters that may be grouped into a plurality of categories, such as environment and server. Examples of these categories may include test, development, user acceptance, and quality control for environment, and application, mail, and database for server. The system includes one or more graphical user interfaces and may include one or more building tool interfaces, which allow common commercial application compiling tools and other compiling tools to interact with the system of the present invention. The system database also may contain a plurality of templates of configuration files associated with common components of enterprise applications, such as, for example, name-value pair properties files, extensible markup language (xml) files, and comma separated value (csv) files.

According to an aspect of the embodiment, the system database also may contain a plurality of pre-defined configuration files for certain components of an application, including third-party components. It is common for applications to be made up of multiple components of code, instead of being built on one single block of code. Each component may have one or more configuration files associated with it wherein the parameters within the configuration files must be modified for each environment. Accordingly, applications often have certain components in common with other applications, and typically, these components come from outside the corporation, such as, for example, from third-party programmers and/or open source coders. Thus, the system database may contain pre-defined configuration files for common application components, wherein the configuration files are defined for a specific environment.

According to another aspect of the embodiment, the configuration file tool may include a discovery component to access an application and retrieve the application's current configuration files for one or more components of the application, which typically are modified each time the application is deployed onto a new environment or a new version of the application is deployed. The system then may store the configuration files and automatically create templates for these components instead of requiring such templates to be generated manually by a system administrator.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, a method for managing configuration files of an application includes the steps of accessing a configuration file tool, and querying for one or more configuration file parameters related to a specific environment. The method further includes the configuration file tool retrieving the configuration file parameters related to the specified environment from a system database, and transmitting the parameters to a compiler. Upon receiving the configuration file parameters, the compiler generates configuration files for the application and incorporates the configuration files into the build of the application. Examples of configuration file parameters may include, but are not limited to, the servers to interface with the application, the tool bars to be made available to a user of the application, and the message format to be used by the application.

In yet another embodiment of the application, a method for managing configuration files of an application includes the steps of accessing a configuration file tool and querying for one or more pre-defined configuration files associated with certain components of an application. The method further includes the configuration file tool retrieving the configuration files from the system database as described above and transmitting the configuration files to a compiler. The compiler then may incorporate the pre-defined configuration files into the application build.

In yet another embodiment of the present invention, a method for managing configuration files of an application includes the steps of accessing a configuration file tool and requesting the configuration file tool to generate one or more configuration files for one or more components of an application with respect to a specific environment. The method further includes the configuration file tool accessing a system database, querying for one or more templates related to the component(s), and querying for parameters related to the specified environment. The configuration file tool then merges the retrieved parameters with the retrieved templates to create one or more configuration files for the specified component(s). The method further includes transmitting the configuration files to a compiler, and the compiler incorporating the configuration files into the application during the build of the application.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, a method for managing configuration files of an application in order to deploy the application onto a different environment, includes the steps of accessing a configuration file tool as described above, and querying for configuration file parameters associated with the different environment from a system database. The method further includes the configuration file tool retrieving the configuration file parameters, and transmitting them to a compiler, which then modifies the configuration files of the application to incorporate the configuration file parameters associated with the new environment. Alternately, the method may include the steps of retrieving pre-defined configuration files for a one or more components of the application, wherein the pre-defined configuration files contain parameters related to the different environment, or requesting the configuration file tool to generate new configuration files for one or more components of the application using stored templates related to the components and stored parameters related to the different environment.

Additional features of the methods described above may include maintaining the modifications made to a configuration file as individual versions, and comparing versions of the modifications made to a configuration file for maintenance of an application, and for further design and development of an application and/or of a future application. Further, the system of the embodiments of the present invention may include a tool for a quick search and retrieval of a specific parameter for a specific environment instead of requiring a user to search manually for the parameter through multiple configuration files. Thus, a user may view all the parameters related to a specific environment in one place instead of searching through multiple files.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention will be more readily understood from the detailed description of the embodiments presented below considered in conjunction with the attached drawings, of which:

FIG. 1 presents a system for managing application configuration, according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates a method of managing application configuration, according to an embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 3 illustrates examples of configuration file parameter categories, according to an embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

FIG. 1 presents a system for managing configuration files of an application, according to an embodiment of the present invention. The system includes configuration file tool 101 that comprises database 102, which contains a plurality of configuration file parameters, a plurality of configuration file templates, and a plurality of pre-defined configuration files. Further, configuration file tool 101 comprises one or more user interfaces 103 that provide access to the tool by a user, such as a system administrator. The system further includes an application-building tool, such as a compiler 104, and one or more applications 105 that are generated and revised by compiler 104.

FIG. 2 illustrates a method for managing configuration files, according to an embodiment of the present invention. The steps of the method need not occur in the order presented, and some of the steps may occur essentially simultaneously.

At step 201, a user, such as a system administrator, accesses configuration file tool 101 via a user interface 103 to input configuration file parameters associated with a one or more environments into database 102. The user may group the configuration file parameters into one or more categories, as shown in FIG. 3. The configuration file parameters may be grouped into certain categories, such as environment 301, server 302, or environment groups 303. Additionally, certain categories of configuration file parameters may be cross-linked to one another, as shown by server detail 304, which is cross-linked with server 302 and environment 301, and environment detail 305, which is cross-linked with environment 301 and environment groups 303. As shown in each of 301-305, each configuration file parameter consists of a configuration file parameter name coupled to specific value. Examples of configuration parameters are shown in Table 1 and Table 2:

TABLE 1
Development Environment

	Configuration Parameter Name	Parameter Value
	application.log.directory	C:\dev\logfiles
	application.log.filename	applog.txt
	application.SMTP_server.address	198.162.1.54
	application.SMTP_server.port	4252
	application.log_level	DEBUG

TABLE 2
Test Environment

	Configuration Parameter Name	Parameter Value
	application.log.directory	/apps/test/application/logs
	application.log.filename	applog.txt
	application.SMTP_server.address	235.42.36.42
	application.SMTP_server.port	4252
	application.log_level	WARN

In the examples above, the configuration parameters are listed as name-value pairs, for example, in the Development environment, “application.log.directory” is the name of a specific parameter and is coupled with a value “C:\dev\logfiles.”

Alternately, at step 203, the user may access configuration file tool 101 to create one or more templates associated with specific components of an application. The user generates a template by selecting configuration file parameter names from one or more lists displayed by configuration file tool 101. The user then stores the template in database 102.

At step 202, the user begins to build and compile application 105 using compiler 104. During the building process, the user instructs compiler 104 to access configuration file tool 101 and query for all configuration file parameters associated with a specific environment, as shown at step 204. Upon retrieving the requested configuration file parameters from database 102, configuration file tool 101 transmits the parameters to compiler 104, which generates configuration files using the received parameters as part of the build of application 105, as shown at step 205.

Alternately, a user may instruct compiler 104 to access configuration file tool 101 and request for configuration files to be created for one or more components of application 105 for a specific environment, as shown at step 206. Upon receiving this request, configuration file tool 101 queries database 102 for one or more templates that relate to the components of application 105 specified by the user. Additionally, configuration file tool 101 queries database 102 for configuration file parameters associated with the environment specified by the user. At step 207, configuration file tool 101 then merges the retrieved configuration file parameters with the retrieved templates by matching each configuration file parameter name to the parameter names that are listed in each template. For each match, configuration file tool 101 assigns the related parameter value to the parameter name in the template. Once the matching process is complete, configuration file tool 101 saves each filled template as a configuration file related to a specific component and a specific environment. Configuration file tool 101 then transmits the configuration files to compiler 104.

At step 208, compiler 104 incorporates the configuration files, whether received from configuration file tool 101 or generated by compiler 104, into the build of application 105. Once the build is complete, the user may proceed with deploying application 105 onto the specified environment.

At some point, the user may wish to deploy application 105 onto a different environment, which requires revision of the configuration files of application 105. At step 209, the user may instruct compiler 104 to access configuration file tool 101 and query for configuration file parameters for the different environment. Alternately, the user may instruct compiler 104 to request for configuration file tool 101 to generate new configuration files for specific components within application 105 using the configuration file parameters associated with the different environment. Configuration file tool 101 repeats the steps described above and either transmits configuration file parameters directly to compiler 104 in order for compiler 104 to rewrite the configuration files of application 105, or transmits modified configuration files for certain components within application 105, as shown at step 210. Compiler 104 incorporates the rewritten or modified configuration files into application 105 and prepares application 105 for deployment onto the different environment.

While the present invention has been described with respect to what is presently considered to be the preferred embodiment(s), it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiment(s). To the contrary, the invention is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. The scope of the following claims is to be accorded the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and equivalent structures and functions.