Asynchronous object oriented configuration control system for highly reliable distributed systems

The configuration control system is implemented in an environment of multiple hardware platforms and operating systems and can be used to control hardware, software, data and system abstractions. The configuration control system gives the appearance of a unified maintenance environment even though it is controlling hardware and software from many vendors with multiple maintenance environments. It is designed to control the configuration of any system where there are dependencies among subsystems and loss of a subsystem has the potential to interrupt service. The maintenance configuration control protocol unifies Configuration Control to allow any subsystem to communicate with any other subsystem and to the user interface using a common messaging interface. It creates a common state model, relationship model, behavior model and request/response messaging interface for all subsystems whether they are hardware, software, or an abstraction. Furthermore, the maintenance configuration control protocol permits distributed maintenance which is data-driven. That is, it does not depend on a central intelligence to make Configuration Control decisions. Each subsystem is empowered to approve/disapprove a maintenance request and execute it autonomously based on its own data. That data includes its state and its relationships to other subsystems. Because each subsystem is autonomous, it is possible to have many concurrent configuration control requests executing in parallel. Race conditions and conflicts are handled by the common software representing the subsystem.