Cfengine on Topical Islands - Unifying Configuration Management and Knowledge Management

Mark Burgess University College Oslo, Norway

Description

There is a simple approach to integrating knowledge with configuration management. The key springs from two compatible models: Promise Theory and Topic Maps. Promise Theory is a model of policy originated by Burgess as a way of modelling the autonomous operation of configuration management in cfengine.

What makes Topic Maps attractive compared to other more complex logic systems for ontology is that they are intended for human reasoning (something humans are very good at), not for machine inference (which is something machines have rarely been very good at). Although they sound like very different animals, Topic Maps and promises are closely related and form a neatly symbiotic relationship.