Automatic deployment of distributed software systems: Definitions and state of the art

This article first provides up-to-date terminology and definitions related to software deployment. Then, it proposes an analytical framework and reviews recent research works on automatic deployment with reference to this framework, and synthesizes the results. The review shows that existing solutions are incomplete, and possibly inefficient or unusable, when distribution, heterogeneity, scalability, dynamics and openness are primary concerns. In particular, they barely support dynamic reactions to unforeseeable events. Additionally, abstraction level and expressiveness at design time are rather limited regarding deployment complexity.