Leveraging Semantic Web Technologies in Configuration Management

Although the concept of Semantic Web and Semantic Web technologies (SWT) in particular have been investigated over several years now, they were mainly seen as an interesting research topic having its application domain primarily in the World Wide Web (WWW) rather than be matured enough to be used within a productive environment that might have no direct relation to the WWW at all. With recent developments in the area of Web 3.0 (the Web of Data) including the emerging trends of Big Data and Linked (Open/Closed) Data, SWTs have proven to be able to process and consume large amounts of data, whilst at the same time offering extended reasoning capabilities. Configuration management (CM) on the contrary, deals with software systems in complex technological environments and faces highly complex challenges, such as (i) configuring and incorporating heterogeneous components into complete systems, or (ii) providing elaborated change management for such components. To tackle those challenges, sophisticated solution approaches which utilize available semantic information about components, systems, and the relationships among them are required. The aim of the proposed dissertation is to leverage the use of Semantic Web technologies in configuration management, i.e. address the identified challenges of CM by offering elaborated solutions based on Semantic Web technologies.