Multple Application Management

[Ulf Wiger]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Vance Shipley wrote:

>Your question strikes a familiar chord with me.  My view of the
>Erlang/OTP environment is that it should support multiple
>applications in the same way that a Unix server does.  I should
>be able to hand you a release package to install on your node
>with applications A & B running and after installing you'd now
>have A, B & C running.
>
>The OTP provides some wonderful tools for building
>"applications", packaging them into "releases" and installing
>them on running systems handling necessary dependencies and
>code upgrades.  It doesn't however work sjust described.


The AXD 301 has functionality similar to what you describe. We
have the possibility to add applications to an already running
system, and if a new version of an already running application is
made available, the software management component will figure out
how to upgrade the system with it.

This is done with the help of a layer on top of the release
handler, and some design rules. One of the important things is
that there must be a framework for initializing mnesia tables,
and registering system resources (such as web menus and pages,
alarm types, and distribution groups). It should also be
possible, of course, to unregister the same, if an application is
to be removed.

This stuff could hypothetically be made available as Open Source,
but we don't have the resources to do that at AXD 301.

/Uffe
-- 
Ulf Wiger, Senior Specialist,
   / / /   Architecture & Design of Carrier-Class Software
  / / /    Strategic Product & System Management
 / / /     Ericsson Telecom AB, ATM Multiservice Networks