Innovations Syst Softw Eng (2006) 2:99–111 DOI 10.1007/s11334-006-0003-y ORIGINAL PAPER MaTRICS: A service-based management tool for remote intelligent configuration of systems Markus Bajohr · Tiziana Margaria Received: 5 July 2005 / Accepted: 13 October 2005 / Published online: 11 July 2006 © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2006 Abstract With MaTRICS, we describe a service-ori- ented architecture that allows remotely connected users to modify the configuration of any service provided by a specific (application) server, like email-, news- or web-servers. Novel to our approach is that the system can manage configuration processes on heterogeneous software- and hardware-platforms, which are performed from a variety of peripherals unmatched in today’s prac- tice, where devices like mobile phones, faxes, PDAs are enabled to be used by system managers as remote sys- tem configuration and management tools. Keywords Configuration systems · Service-Oriented Architectures · Model Driven Design · Environments for pervasive computing · Distributed systems · Communication protocols 1 Motivation “Can you just change...” – modifications of installations and configurations on computer- and software-systems are in general a complex, distributed process, which gets the more sensitive the less the “computers” composing the system are perceived as such. In particular perva- M. Bajohr Chair of Programming Systems, Universität Dortmund, Germany e-mail: markus.bajohr@cs.uni-dortmund.de T. Margaria (B ) Chair of Service and Software Engineering, Universität Potsdam, Germany e-mail: margaria@cs.uni-potsdam.de sive and ubiquitous computing scenarios are likely to depend heavily on the correct installation, configura- tion, and adaptive management of the software and sys- tems that constitute their execution and communication backbone. Thus, reliable operation requires a coopera- tive effort of several system administrators and system managers, each with detailed knowledge of the running systems and their installed tools. With MaTRICS, we tackle the problem of continu- ous and ubiquitous maintenance of such backbone sys- tems. Our users are in fact system administrators and managers. In this paper, we describe a service-oriented archi- tecture that allows those users to remotely connect and carry out sensitive operations, modifying the configura- tion of any service provided by a specific (application) server (cluster), like e.g. DNS, ftp-, email-, news-, or web-servers. Novel to our approach is that the MaTRICS can manage configuration processes on het- erogeneous software- and hardware-platforms, which are performed from a variety of peripherals unmatched in today’s practice. In this sense, we realize a sort of per- vasive system management, where devices like mobile phones, faxes, PDAs are enabled to be used by system managers as remote system configuration and manage- ment tools. The need for this increased mobility and flexibility arose from our immediate experience: during the last five years we have been running many instances of the Online Conference Service (OCS) [8–10], a complex collaborative internet service that proactively helps au- thors, Program Committee chairs, Program Committee members, and reviewers to cooperate efficiently dur- ing their collaborative handling of the selection of a conference program. A description of the service and