Supervisory process control and manufacturing information system application having a layered architecture

A configuration facility is provided for specifying a deployment model for supervisory process control and manufacturing information applications. The deployment model associates application objects to particular physical computing devices and provides a view of the distribution of the objects upon the physical computing devices. The configuration facility comprises: platform definitions specifying one or more physical computing device types; engine definitions specifying engines that execute upon the physical computing systems and thereby define types of services supported by the physical computing devices; area definitions specifying areas comprising logical groupings of application objects; a set of hierarchical relationships specifying assignments of the engines to particular ones of the physical computing systems, and assignments of the areas to particular ones of the engines; and a deployment view generator depicting, in accordance with the set of hierarchical relationships, a hierarchy of physical computing devices, engines, and areas.